Biography

Angela Vincent is Emeritus Professor of Neuroimmunology at the University of Oxford, and an Emeritus Fellow of Somerville College. She co-founded with Prof John Newsom-Davis (Action Research Chair of Clinical Neurology 1987-1998) the Neurosciences Group at the Royal Free Hospital in London before they moved to the Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine in 1988. 

From 1992 until 2016, she held an Honorary Consultant position in Immunology and ran the Clinical Neuroimmunology service. Under the leadership of Drs Sarosh Irani and Patrick Waters, this continues to be an international referral centre for the measurement of antibodies in neurological diseases (see Autoimmune Neurology). 

Angela was formerly Head of Department of Clinical Neurology (2005-2008), President of the International Society of Neuroimmunology, and an Associate Editor of Brain (2004-2013). She was elected to the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2003 and the Royal Society in 2011. In 2018 she was awarded the Klaus Joachim Zülch Prize with J. Dalmau and J. Posner. She is now Emeritus Professor at Oxford, and also has honorary positions at University College and King’s College London.

Research interests

Angela Vincent's major research interests included all auto-antibody mediated ion channel and receptor disorders of the nervous system. Specific achievements included:

1. The discovery that maternal antibodies to different fetal proteins can cause rare neuromuscular disorders, and are likely to be involved in some forms of autism or other neurodevelopmental disorders.
2. The definition and characterisation of a new form of myasthenia gravis associated with antibodies to a receptor tyrosine kinase, MuSK, that performs an important maintenance role at the neuromuscular junction.
3. The recognition that some central nervous system disorders, involving memory loss, seizures, movement disorders and psychiatric features, can be caused by antibodies to various receptors or ion channel associated proteins. In these, and several other conditions, she helped to devise new ways to measure the pathogenic antibodies for better clinical diagnosis, and established in vitro and in vivo model systems for investigation of the pathophysiology of the diseases. 

She now works, in collaboration with Professor David Beeson, on myasthenia gravis and related diseases in the Neuromuscular Disorders Group.