Shireen Kassam

Shireen Kassam MBBS, FRCPath, PhD is Visiting Professor in the University's Health and Wellbeing Research Group. She is also a Consultant Haematologist and Honorary Senior Lecturer at King’s College Hospital, London with a specialist interest in the treatment of patients with lymphoma. Shireen's role at the University will be to deliver high-quality evidence-based education in the field of plant-based nutrition.

Shireen is passionate about promoting plant-based nutrition for the prevention and reversal of chronic diseases and for maintaining optimal health after treatment for cancer. She discovered the power of nutrition for the prevention and treatment of disease in 2013 and since then has been following a whole food plant-based diet. She has immersed herself in the science of nutrition and health, reading scientific papers and books, attending nutrition conferences and completing recognised continuing professional development activities to keep up to date in the field. She has completed the eCornell certification in plant-based nutrition. With her medical and scientific training, Shireen is uniquely placed to interpret nutritional data and incorporate the latest findings into daily medical practice.

Shireen founded Plant-Based Health Professionals UK in 2017 (pbhp.uk). This is a non-profit organisation dedicated to providing evidence-based education on plant-based nutrition and lifestyle interventions for the prevention and treatment of chronic disease.

She qualified as a medical doctor in 2000, initially training in general medicine. She then specialised in Haematology. During training, she took time out to undertake a PhD (University of London, 2011). Her research investigated the role of selenium, an essential micronutrient, in sensitising cancer cells to chemotherapy. She was able to show that supra-nutritional doses of selenium could enhance the action of chemotherapy in the laboratory.

She has published a number of peer-reviewed papers in the field of lymphoma.