Quick Facts
Biography
Angela Vincent FRS FMedSci (born 1942) is emeritus professor at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Somerville College, Oxford.
Career and research
Angela was Head of the Department of Clinical Neurology (2005-2008) at the University of Oxford, President of the International Society of Neuroimmunology, and an Associate Editor of Brain (2004-2013). Her research group was located in the Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine at the John Radcliffe Hospital, working on a wide range of biological disciplines encompassing molecular biology, biochemistry, cellular immunology and intracellular neurophysiology. The group's research focused on autoimmune and genetic disorders of the neuromuscular junction, peripheral nerves and more recently the exciting field of central nervous system diseases. The principal autoimmune diseases studied were myasthenia gravis, the Lambert-Eaton myasthenic syndrome, limbic encephalitis, other types of autoimmune encephalitis and acquired neuromyotonia. Since 2016 she has been Emeritus Professor at Oxford University and she continues to advise and support young researchers.Her group's work is continued under Associate Professor Sarosh Irani and Dr Patrick Waters.
Her contributions have been mainly on the roles of antibodies directed against ion channels, proteins complexed to ion channels, such as LGI1, CASPR2 and Contactin-2, within neurons, glia and the nerve-muscle junction in the pathogenesis of above-mentioned diseases.
She has demonstrated that transfer of these antibodies across the placenta from the pregnant woman to the fetus in utero can cause developmental abnormalities.
Awards and honours
In 2009 she presented the Leslie Oliver Oration at Queen's Hospital. In 2009 she received the medal of the Association of British Neurologists and in 2017 the World Federation of Neurology Scientific Contributions to Neurology award.She was awarded the Klaus Joachim Zülch Prize with J Posner and J Dalmau in 2018.In 2003, she was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences (FMedSci) and in 2011 Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS).