Victoria Male

Biography

I am an immunologist with a long-standing interest in the development and function of natural killer (NK) cells and innate lymphoid cells (ILCs). I am currently Senior Lecturer in Reproductive Immunology, running a research group at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital Campus of Imperial College London.

I did my PhD at the University of Cambridge on NK cells in human pregnancy. I then went on to a post-doctoral project investigating the transcriptional control of NK cell development in mice, which I undertook at Imperial College London. In 2015, I started my own laboratory at the Royal Free Hospital Campus of UCL. Working closely with the liver transplant team, we showed that long-lived resident NK cells are present in the human liver and defined some of that pathways by which they develop. We also showed that NK cells recruited to the liver become less functional in obesity-associated liver disease, and that this is associated with a decreased ability to clear cancer cells.

In 2019, I returned to reproductive immunology, joining Imperial College London and the medical research charity Borne, which aims to prevent preterm birth. My research group is investigating how innate immune cells in the uterine mucosa work to establish and maintain pregnancy, and how this may fail in disorders of pregnancy such as pre-eclampsia and pre-term birth.

During the pandemic, I have spent a portion of my time collating and communicating the data on SARS-CoV2 and COVID vaccination in female fertility and pregnancy, and am collaborating on some epidemiological research in these areas.

You can contact me by email at v.male@imperial.ac.uk or on Twitter @VikiLovesFACS