Email: portico-services@ucl.ac.uk
Help Desk: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/ras/portico/helpdesk
- Emeritus Professor
- Div of Infection & Immunity
- Faculty of Medical Sciences


The development of vaccines based upon reproductive hormones, particularly human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG), which have utility both as immmunological contraceptives, and as anti-cancer therapeutics.
For contraception the vaccine formulation should elicit neutralising antibodies in the absence of cytotoxic T lymphocyte (CTL) responses. The 'pregnancy-specfic' hormone hCG is also aberrantly expressed in a number of different malignancies. In these cases the beta-chain is often expresssed in the absence of the alpha-chain. Anti-cancer vaccines based upon hCG may benefit from being able to elicit CTL responses in addition to antibody responses. A number of mutated hCG-beta molecules have been generated, one of which (hCGbR68E)has an improved immunogenic profile compared to the wild-type sequence.
Vice Dean (Education) Faculty of Medical Sciences. Editor of 2 encyclopedias (Encyclopedia of Immunology [Elsevier] and Encyclopedia of Life Sciences [Wiley-Blackwell]). Author or co-author of several textbooks and laboratory manuals. Particularly interested in innovation in web-base learning. Responsible for all taught course provision at both undergraduate and postgraduate level within the Division of Infection and Immunity. Course director of several undergraduate and postgraduate courses, plus extensive teaching experience at all levels both in the UK and overseas.