Jameel Inal

After a degree in Microbiology from King’s College London and MPhil in the molecular biology of Bacillus thuringiensis and the use of natural gene transfer systems, Jameel then worked in vaccine development for his PhD, at the Centre for Applied Microbiology and Research at Porton Down (this was part of the Public Health Laboratory Service, now the Health Protection Agency). During this time he also gained experience of working with ACDP category 3 pathogens.

He had two W.H.O. fellowships in the Immunology Unit, at the Dept. of Medical Parasitology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, continuing his work in vaccinology, applied to the human Schistosoma parasite. He then worked for one year as a Research Assistant at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research (UCL-Middlesex branch), working in the lab of Prof. Mike Waterfield on PI3 kinase signalling. During his second period at LSHTM he discovered a new complement regulatory protein receptor in the Schistosoma parasite and went on with funding from the Sir Halley Stewart Trust to characterise this together with Prof. Bob Sim at the MRC Immunochemistry Unit, Univ. of Oxford.

From 2000, he continued for the next five years his research in complement regulation as a Senior Research Fellow, at the University Hospital Basel, Switzerland, in the Dept. of Biomedicine. With funding from the Research Foundations of Roche and Novartis and capital venture funding, his team, with help from Innogenetics NV in Belgium, developed a synthetic peptide, able to therapeutically inhibit complement-mediated inflammation in vivo.

In 2005 Jameel returned to London, as a Senior Lecturer at London Met. Two years on he was made Professor of Immunology. In late 2007 he started his first experiments on microvesicles, from a preliminary interest in their ability to inhibit complement activation. In January 2009 he founded the Cellular and Molecular Immunology Research Centre, or CMIRC and became a founding member of the International Society for Extracellular Vesicles. He is on the editorial panel of Scientific Reports and has been on the editorial panel of the Journal of Extracellular Vesicles. He also hosted ‘Microvesiculation and Disease,’ the second such meeting in the UK, in September 2012. Since 2010, Jameel has published 39 papers and one book chapter in this new field.

In December 2017 Jameel moved as the Professor of Biomedical Science to the School of Life and Medical Sciences (LMS) at the University of Hertfordshire to head the Biosciences Research Group. From November 2018 he was Associate Dean for Research in LMS and as of May 2020 has taken the role of Visiting Professor in Biomedical Science, whilst taking on the role of Professor of Immunobiology at London met. He has supervised 13 PhDs to completion and his main research focus is on Extracellular Vesicles in infectious disease and cancer.