People

Tiago C. Luis, PhD

Tiago Luis

Principal Investigator
Sir Henry Dale Fellow of the Wellcome Trust and The Royal Society

I graduated from the University of Lisbon (Portugal) in 2005 and since then my research has focused on the mechanisms regulating haematopoietic stem cell (HSC) function and the extracellular signals these cells receive from their niche. During my PhD studies in the laboratory of Prof. Frank Staal and Prof. Jacques van Dongen at Erasmus Medical Centre Rotterdam (The Netherlands) I studied the role of the Wnt-signalling pathway in haematopoiesis. I demonstrated a stage/lineage-specific and dosage-dependent effect of Wnt-signalling throughout adult haematopoiesis. After obtaining my PhD in 2010 I joined the laboratory of Prof. Sten Eirik Jacobsen at the University of Oxford (UK) as an EMBO postdoctoral fellow, to investigate the cellular pathways of lineage commitment from HSCs. I characterized the first haematopoietic progenitors that migrate and colonize the foetal thymus, where they encounter a specific microenvironment eliciting further differentiation through the T-lymphocyte lineage. In 2014 I as awarded a Kay Kendall Leukaemia Fund Fellowship to investigate the bone marrow niche of platelet-biased HSCs. 

In 2018 I was awarded a Sir Henry Dale Fellowship from the Wellcome Trust and the Royal Society to start my laboratory at Imperial College London. My research focuses on the molecular mechanisms by which the bone marrow niche regulates HSCs, in homeostasis and in the development of haematological malignancies.


 Lab Members

 

Lab Members

Aya Elmeligy

PhD Student 

My Name is Aya Elmeligy, I completed a Master's at the University of East Anglia where my worked on a project investigating lung adenocarcinomas. I joined the Luis Lab as a PhD student in 2023 where my research is focusing on the role of TGFb signalling in the regulation of hematopoietic stem cell proliferation and quiescence.

Henry Xu

PhD Student

My name is Jiarui (Henry) Xu and I come from China. Following graduation from Imperial College London in 2019 with BSc in Biological Sciences with Research Abroad, I worked as a research assistant at Wellcome-MRC Cambridge Stem Cell Institute for 18 months. During this time, I contributed to projects including the characterization of human foetal haematopoiesis using single-cell RNA-seq. In 2021, I joined Tiago Luis group at Imperial College as a PhD student. My research focus on the mechanisms regulating the quiescence and proliferation of haematopoietic stem cells. 

Aisha Jibril, PhD

Postdoctoral Research Associate

My name is Aisha Jibril, and I completed my undergraduate degree in Cell and Molecular biology at Aston University. In 2019, I pursued a PhD at the University of East Anglia where I investigated the role of mitochondrial damage-associated molecular patterns (mtDAMPs) in the bone marrow microenvironment of multiple myeloma. In 2023, I joined the Luis Lab as a Postdoctoral Research Associate where I am investigating the regulatory effects of pro-inflammatory signals within the bone marrow microenvironment on hematopoietic stem cells in clonal haematopoiesis and myelodysplastic syndromes.

Current research project students

Shufan Yue - BSc Medical Biosciences

 


Join the lab

You can find more information here. If you are interested in joining the lab please get in touch.


Alumni

Past Lab Members

Marine Secchi - PhD Student (Wellcome Trust - Molecular & Cellular Basis of Infection) - 2020/24

Oliver Herd - Post-doctoral Research Associate - 2021

Vasiliki Symeonidou - Post-doctoral Research Associate - 2020

Kexin Fan - Research Assistant - 2019/20 and MSc Immunology 2019

Past Rotation Students

Ywen Cao (Wendy) - BSc Medical Biosciences - 2024

Olivia Zukowska - Intercalated BSc Molecular and Translational Haematology - 2024

Rose Leishman - MSc Immunology - 2024

Andy Zhang - Msc Immunology - 2023

Julius Schmiegelow - MRes Biomedical Research - 2023

Paula Horta Hugues - MRes Systems and Synthetic Biology - 2022

Filippos Maniatis - MRes Molecular and Cellular Biosciences -2022

Hanrui Zhao - MRes Molecular and Cellular Biosciences - 2022

Sisi Chen - Undergraduate Student - BSc Biological Sciences - 2021

Victoire Boulat - MRes Molecular and Cellular Biosciences - 2021 

Yxuan Wang - MRes Molecular and Cellular Biosciences - 2020 

Hana Dowidar - Undergraduate Student - BSc Medical Bioscience - 2020

Marine Secchi - MSc, Wellcome Trust, Molecular and Cellular Basis of Infection - 2020

Anu Chahal - Undergraduate Student - BSc Biochemistry - 2020

Mark Pailing - MRes Molecular and Cellular Biosciences - 2020 

Eleonor Hawkins - MRes Molecular and Cellular Biosciences - 2019

Kexin Fan - MSc Immunology - 2019

 

Contact us

Dr. Tiago C. Luis

Centre for Inflammatory Diseases,

Dept. of Immunology and Inflammation,

Room 9S4, Commonwealth Building,

Hammersmith Campus,
Imperial College London,
London W12 0NN, 

United Kingdom

t.luis@imperial.ac.uk

Funding

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