Amrita Ahluwalia

Amrita Ahluwalia is a British pharmacologist and professor of vascular pharmacology at Queen Mary University of London. Her research considers the development of therapeutics for cardiovascular inflammation. She was awarded the WISE Research Award in 2015.

Early life and education Ahluwalia studied pharmacology as an undergraduate at the University of Bath. During her undergraduate degree she spent a year at Glaxo, where the systems and efficiency impressed her. Here she explored drugs that looked to improve coronary vascular function, and was first introduced to animal dissection. After earning her doctorate she moved to St George's, University of London, where she worked with Patrick Vallance.

Research and career Ahluwalia joined the faculty at the University College London, where she was part of the Cruciform Project that would become the Wolfson Institute for Biomedical Research.

In the early 2000s she started working on an endothelial mediator that required the generation of a knockout mouse, and, to maximise efficiency, used female as well as male mice in her clinical trials. Her human studies have shown that women recover from inflammation quicker, which is why they are less susceptible to coronary disease.

Awards and prizes

2012 GSK Prize in Clinical Pharmacology 2015 WISE Prize for Research 2023 Paget Lecture

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