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Posted by: The Sumaira Foundation in News & Announcements
January 21, 2022 – The Sumaira Foundation is pleased to welcome Pr. Jacqueline Palace and Pr. Sarosh Irani from University of Oxford University to its Medical Advisory Board
Jacqueline Palace is a consultant neurologist in Oxford and Professor in the Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences, Oxford University. She runs a national service for neuromyelitis optica service (NMO) and congenital myasthenic syndromes (CMS). Her clinical and research interests cover NMOSD, MOGAD, MS, and myasthenia gravis as well CMS and include clinical treatment trials, immunological studies, pathology, biomarkers, genetics and imaging studies. She has been a UK lead for the National Risk Sharing Scheme which assessed the long-term effectiveness for disease modifying agents in multiple sclerosis, is a board member for the European Charcot Foundation, and on the steering committee for MAGNIMS.
Sarosh Irani is a clinician scientist, Professor of Autoimmune Neurology and consultant neurologist, at the University of Oxford. His group aims to improve treatments and outcomes for patients with autoantibody-mediated diseases of the nervous system and understand the biology behind these rapidly expanding conditions.
Sarosh undertook clinical training in Oxford and London, with a DPhil in Oxford and a Fulbright postdoctoral position in UCSF. He has made several discoveries within the translational neuroimmunology space. These have spanned basic clinical observations, including description and refinement of clinical phenotypes associated with autoantibodies, detection of pathogenic autoantibodies, genetic findings and B cell immunobiology, all in the field of autoantibody-mediated diseases.
Clinically, he runs the UK’s major clinic for autoantibody related CNS diseases. He has recognized faciobrachial dystonic seizures in association with LGI1-antibodies, the importance of early immunotherapy in these patients, and distinctive psychopathological features associated with NMDAR-antibody encephalitis. In the laboratory, he has led the discovery of LGI1- and CASPR2-antibodies, their associated HLA associations and the roles of B cells in the pathogenesis of autoimmune forms of encephalitis and neuromyelitis optica.
He was awarded the Graham-Bull Prize in Clinical Science / Goulstonian Lectureship, from the Royal College of Physicians, and awards including the NIHR BRC Senior Clinical Fellowship, International Society of Neuroimmunology Clinical Science Prize and both Wellcome Intermediate and MRC Senior Clinical Fellowships.
