Muzlifah Haniffa is a Malaysian dermatologist and immunologist who focuses on the development of the immune system and the use of single-cell techniques to understand biology. Haniffa is a professor and Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellow in the Faculty of Medical Sciences at

Newcastle University Newcastle University (legally the University of Newcastle upon Tyne) is a UK public university, public research university based in Newcastle upon Tyne, North East England. It has overseas campuses in Singapore and Malaysia. The university is ...

Early life and education

Haniffa was born in Penang, Malaysia. Her interests in science as a child were piqued initially by space, but later she decided to pursue a career as a clinical scientist. Haniffa studied at Tunku Kurshiah College, Seremban and moved to the UK in the 1990s. Haniffa graduated BSc, MBBCh from the University of Wales College of Medicine in 1999. She became a member of the Royal College of Physicians in 2002. In 2007, she earned a diploma in epidemiology from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. She completed her PhD from

in 2009 and completed her clinical dermatology training in 2010. She was runner-up for the 2009 Sue McCarthy Prize from the Medical Research Council.

Career

In 2013 the European Society for Dermatology Research awarded Haniffa a Silver Award for her research. She was shortlisted for the 2016 North Eastern Woman Entrepreneur of the Year awards in the

STEM Stem or STEM may refer to: Plant structures * Plant stem, a plant's aboveground axis, made of vascular tissue, off which leaves and flowers hang * Stipe (botany), a stalk to support some other structure * Stipe (mycology), the stem of a mushro ...

category. In 2016 her research into the functions of

white blood cell White blood cells, also called leukocytes or leucocytes, are the cell (biology), cells of the immune system that are involved in protecting the body against both infectious disease and foreign invaders. All white blood cells are produced and de ...

s was boosted by a £200,000 fellowship by the Lister Institute of Preventive Medicine. Professor

Chris Day Christopher Nicholas Day (born 28 July 1975) is an English former professional footballer who played as a goalkeeper. Day started his career at Tottenham Hotspur, where he spent five years, making one Premier League appearance for the North Lon ...

, serving as vice-chancellor of the medical faculty, congratulated Haniffa on her achievement, saying: Haniffa's work on the immune system has included discovering that a population of what was considered

dendritic cell Dendritic cells (DCs) are antigen-presenting cells (also known as ''accessory cells'') of the mammalian immune system. Their main function is to process antigen material and present it on the cell surface to the T cells of the immune system. ...

s (defined by the presence of CD14) in human skin were in fact

macrophage Macrophages (abbreviated as M φ, MΦ or MP) ( el, large eaters, from Greek ''μακρός'' (') = large, ''φαγεῖν'' (') = to eat) are a type of white blood cell of the immune system that engulfs and digests pathogens, such as cancer cel ...

s, and studies demonstrating that a subset of

s exist in mice which can activate T helper 17 cells against a fungal infection. Haniffa was awarded the 2018 Early Career Prize in Allerlology by the 5th European Congress on Immunology. Haniffa is a member of the Human Cell Atlas, which aims to characterise all cells in the human body using single-cell transcriptomic techniques, alongside Sarah Teichmann, Fiona Powrie, Ashley Moffett, and others. In 2018 her lab contributed to the discovery of the major subset of kidney cells which become mutated and give rise to kidney cancers. This was accomplished by matching the biological make-up of kidney carcinoma cells to given healthy kidney cells. This was followed by a single-cell study of the placenta which discovered new cell sub-types in the decidua, informing understanding of how the maternal and fetal immune systems interact with each other and avoid

miscarriage Miscarriage, also known in medical terms as a spontaneous abortion and pregnancy loss, is the death of an embryo or fetus before it is able to survive independently. Miscarriage before 6 weeks of gestation is defined by ESHRE as biochemical lo ...

pre-eclampsia Pre-eclampsia is a disorder of pregnancy characterized by the onset of high blood pressure and often a significant amount of protein in the urine. When it arises, the condition begins after 20 weeks of pregnancy. In severe cases of the disease ...

. The study used 70,000 cells and tissue from the Human Developmental Biology Resource. In addition Haniffa and collaborators have published single-cell studies on the innate and adaptive immune system, including regulatory T cells,

s, and monocytes. In 2019 the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative announced that it was investing $68 million in grants into furthering the Human Cell Atlas, including awards for Haniffa to study the immune system and liver during ageing in single-cell detail. She is a committee member of the

British Society for Investigative Dermatology British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies. ** Britishness, the British identity and common culture * British English, ...

, who had awarded Haniffa a Junior Investigator Prize in 2012.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Haniffa, Muzlifah Living people People from Penang Malaysian dermatologists Malaysian immunologists Alumni of Newcastle University Year of birth missing (living people) Members of the Royal College of Physicians Alumni of Cardiff University Malaysian emigrants to the United Kingdom 21st-century women physicians