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Staff Profile

Dr Shoba Amarnath

Reader in Immune Regulation

  • Telephone: 01912085074
  • Personal Website: https://blogs.ncl.ac.uk/amarnath/
  • Address: Biosciences Institute
    Cell Signalling
    NUCancer
    Room M4.179
    4th floor William Leech Building
    The Medical School
    Framlington Place
    Newcastle Upon Tyne
    NE2 4HH

    Tel: +44 (0) 1912088257
Background

Background


Shoba Amarnath is a Reader in immune regulation in the Biosciences Institute. Her research focuses on the immune system elucidating the regulation of the immune system. Her research has identified previously unknown immune cells that can play a significant role in curing cancer and autoimmunity. She specialises in defining new paradigms surrounding checkpoint receptor therapies. She has been instrumental in developing new modalities for cellular therapeutics. 


She has trained in various countries including India, UK and the USA. In the UK, she was successful in obtaining an early career scholarship known as the Overseas Reseach Scholarship, a bespoke scholarship that enables non-UK citizens to pursue a PhD.


From this success, she transitioned to a Post-doctoral position at the NCI, NIH, USA.  Working at the National Cancer Institute, she has received several awards for pursuing research that has resulted in new treatments for untreatable blood cancers. She obtained the prestigious International Society of Cell Therapy Award, the FOCIS Bench to Bedside Award bestowed by the Department of Health and Human Services which is the US Federal Agency. Her work on treating uncurable blood cancers resulted in two clinical trials and a patent.


She then moved to Newcastle University in order to establish her research group under the Newcastle University Research Fellowship. Here, she established a fundamental programme in Immunology again focusing on aspects of the immune system that can control cancer and autoimmunity. Her work at Newcastle has been recognized as outstanding and she has received a N8 NewPioneers Award, LeoFoundation Future Leader Prize, an award that recognises early career researchers in the field of dermatology. She held the only prize for 2019 for the entire European/MiddleEast/Asia region. Subsequently, she has also received a Lister Prize.


Between 2017 and 2023, she has delivered >20 invited seminars at national and international conferences and Universities. At Newcastle, she has published in leading Immunology Journals such as the J. Experimental Medicine, Immunity, PNAS, Nature Immunology. 


She has been invited to edit a book on “Protocols for Innate Lymphoid Cell Phenotypic and Functional Characterization: An Overview”- the first ever book that expands on how to work with a new type of immune cells. 


During COVID, she was part of the COVID Winter Scenarios Policy group for two subsequent years starting in 2020 and then reinvited to participate in 2021 as part of the Academy of Medical Sciences which advised the UK SAGE for COVID management during Winter, highlighting her contributions towards science policy.


She collaborates extensively with investigators in Europe and USA. Her work has been cited 15491 times with her highest cited paper garnering >500 citations since 2011. 


Qualifications


Shoba did a B.Sc in Biochemistry at Madras University, India, followed by a M.Sc and Ph.D at the University of Hull, UK. She then pursued a postdoctoral fellowship at the NIH, USA. She then moved to Newcastle, UK starting her research in April 2016 on obtaining a Home Office Licence and Approval for her research work.


Roles and Responsibility


At Newcastle University, Shoba was an elected member of Senate (2020-2024), elected member of council (2023-2024), member of the honorary degrees committee (2020-2024), member of the research and innovation committee (01/23-08/23), member of the steering committee for Newcastle advanced therapies satellite (2022-2024) and member of the BRC skin and oral theme (2023-Present).


Externally, She is an associate editor for the journal Frontiers in Immunology (2022-Present).


External Advisory Roles


UKRI FLF Interview Panel Member (2025-)

UKRI FLF Sift Panel Member (2025-)

LeoFoundation Large Grants Science Evaluation Committee (2025-)

LeoFoundation Serendipity Science Evaluation Committee (2025-)

British Skin Foundation Large Grants Panel (2023-)


Public Engagement and Industry Experience

 

Shoba has been involved in several public engagement activities which include:


Nature Webinar on Distance Mentoring (2022).

LifeLong Learning Initiative on T cell therapies in Cancer (2022)

DNA Technologies in Life Sciences, Institute of Genetic Medicine (2022)

Academy of Medical Sciences Case study on Murine Research (2021)

Science Education for Foster Children, USA (2014-2015)


She has closely worked with the following industrial partners


BD-Biosciences: part-funded her postdoctoral research.

At Newcastle she has obtained funding on a collaborative project with Lonza.


Funding

Shoba's research has been funded by major UK and International funders such as the MRC, Academy of Medical Sciences, Wellcome Trust, CRUK, BSF, LeoFoundation, Lister Institute, etc.


For recent publications please visit:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=amarnath shoba


Area of expertise

T cell Immunobiology, co-receptor biology, Immunotherapy, T cell engineering, Immune Tolerance, ILCs, cancer, autoimmunity.


Patent

Use of PDL1 expressing cells to convert T cells into regulatory T cells. Patent number:9644179; Inventors:Dr. James L.Riley, Dr. Daniel H. Fowler and Dr. Shoba Amarnath.


Membership

British Society of Immunology

European Society of Dermatological Research

British Society of Investigative Dermatology



Research


I have  more than 20 years experience in the field of immunology spanning both fundamental immunology and translational immunology. I have a research group comprising of Post-docs, Technicians, PhD students, M.Res and Summer Students all participating and driving research projects based on their level of training.


My laboratory specialises in the analysis of immune regulation identifying novel immune cells, immune regulatory pathways and novel clinical targets that can be used in treating cancer and autoimmunity.


My funding portfolio has allowed me to set up, manage and direct a substantial research group. My current research group comprise of 2 Postdocs; 2 PhD Students, 1 RA. In addition, I have supervised 6 successful PhD students  who have gone onto academic careers


The research vision of my laboratory is to understand how are immune system is controlled by proteins called co-receptors. Antibodies against co-recptors known as checkpoint therapies have shown to be beneficial in a fraction of cancer patients, with majority of patients not responding to this therapy. We are interested in understanding how resistance occurs to these checkpoint therapies.


Specifically, we aim to identify proteins that control immune cells called Tregs and ILC in inflammation and cancer. Our research suggests that coreceptors function in a more collective regulatory manner than previously defined and current work in the laboratory is focussed on identifying the landscape of checkpoint receptors that are controlled by PD-1. Developing a landscape approach to checkpoint receptors will not only elucidate immune tolerance mechanisms but also identify key checkpoints that could be valuable in treating cancer.


  • Can resistance to checkpoint therapies be overcome by targeting T regulatory cells?

T regulatory cells are a type of immune cell that controls the immune system from over-reacting. Lack of Tregs can result in severe autoimmunity and death. In cancers, an increase in Tregs can allow for cancer to grow and evade the immune system and immune based therapies. Hence, controlling Treg cell function can be beneficial in cancer therapy.


  • Can we overcome resistance to checkpoint therapy specifically anti-PD1 monotherapy using anti-TNF antibodies?

We have found that when resistance to checkpoint therapies arise, there is not only an increase in Tregs, but there is an increase in expression of CD30+ Tregs within the cancer microenvironment, allowing tumours to grow. Ongoing work involves understanding if blocking CD30 along with other checkpoint receptors can contribute to overcoming resistance in cancers such as the skin and kidney.


  • Can ILCs contribute to enhanced anti-cancer responses?

We have discovered novel immune cell subsets called ILCs that can be controlled by checkpoint therapy anti-PD1. Ongoing work includes understanding if ILCs can be targeted to enhance anti-cancer responses in skin and liver cancers.


Our science requires skilled tools currently available within my lab: including animal models of cancer, autoimmunity, alloimmunity and humanised murine models of inflammation, along with protein and protease biochemistry methods. These tools have already proved their value and has helped identify a new protease in Tregs known as asparaginyl endopeptidase (AEP; lgmn) that can regulate Tregs (Stathopoulou et al, Immunity, 2018) in cancer.


Our work on cutaneous inflammation has identified the expression of a well know T cell co-receptor called programmed cell death-1 (PD-1) on a new type of immune cell called Innate Lymphoid Cells (ILC-2s). This work was recently published by us (Taylor et al, J.Exp.Med, 2017). 


We have demonstrated that a previously undefined population of Innate Lymphoid Cells with a type 1 signature is controlled by PD-1 within the melanoma and cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma microenvironment (Lim et al, PNAS, 2023).


Recent efforts in the laboratory has included deep phenotyping of Regulatory T cells in Psoriatic Arthritis (McTaggart et al, JBC, 2025), in the very old (McTaggart et al, Aging Cell, 2025) using scRNA-seq analysis. Extending on the work published in JBC, we are also studying the role of Tregs in tissue repair namely preventing bone loss in Psoriatic arthritis.


We also found that both in mice and humans, the expression of TNFR family of coreceptors are controlled by PD-1 (Lim et al, Nat. Immunol., 2025; Nat. Immunol. Res. Briefing, 2025).


Recent work includes deciphering the role of PD-1 in driving TNFR co-receptors in Dendritic Cells, alongside creating a PD-1 expression atlas on the myeloid compartment of the immune system. These studies provide an insight into the function of PD-1 in controlling barrier immunity, infection control (Candida) and inflammation such as Psoriasis.



Teaching

I provide pastoral support to a number of UG tutees, and also participate in teaching at the UG, M.Res and Graduate level students.

I also lecture on Lymphocytes within the tumour microenvironment which is part of the curriculum for the M.Res Cell Signaling Module. I also teach on the Aging immune system within the M.Res Aging Module.




Publications