To register for your free place at this talk, please email Katie Weeks (k.weeks@imperial.ac.uk).
Our ability to reproduce is intimately linked to and tightly regulated by how much and what we eat. Although it is well known that under-nutrition and obesity can lead to fertility problems, the regulatory pathways that control this have to date been poorly understood.
Professor Dhillo investigates how hormones that govern food intake and reproductive function interact with the brain to control our consumption. His findings have identified novel targets for the development of anti-obesity drugs.
His translational research has also identified the hormone kisspeptin as a potential therapy for IVF treatment, as kisspeptin stimulates the release of reproductive hormones in male and female volunteers, including women with infertility.
Biography
Waljit Dhillo is Professor in Endocrinology & Metabolism and Consultant Endocrinologist at Hammersmith Hospital. He undertook his medical training at St Bartholomew’s Hospital Medical School with an intercalated BSc in Biochemistry funded by the Medical Research Council.
Whilst working as a Specialist Registrar he completed a PhD as a Wellcome Trust Clinical Training Fellow at Imperial with Professor Steve Bloom. He was then awarded a National Institute for Health Research Clinician Scientist Fellowship and appointed as a Clinical Senior Lecturer at Imperial. Professor Dhillo was awarded a HEFCE Clinical Senior Lecturer Award followed by a NIHR Career Development Fellowship. In 2009 he was promoted to Reader and in 2011 to Professor.
During his career he has been awarded the American Endocrine Society Award for Excellence in Clinical Research, the British Society for Neuroscience Young Investigator Prize and the Royal College of Physicians Goulstonian Lectureship.