Natasha Aley, Neza Alfazema, Melanie Clements, Michael Ellis, Lauren Finlayson, Heather MacPherson, Shahida Sheraz, Heli Vaikkinen, Megan Woodberry, Tian Yuan, Leila Zakka
The GCGR would also like to acknowledge and thank the clinical research teams at UoE and UCL for tissue consent and conllection
Prof Steven Pollard is Chair of Stem Cell and Cancer Biology at the Centre for Regenerative Medicine, University of Edinburgh. He is an associate director of the Cancer Research UK Scotland Centre. His current research spans stem cell biology, synthetic biology and cancer genomics, with a focus on molecular and cellular mechanisms regulating neural stem self-renewal and differentiation, and how these are disrupted in human brain tumours. Steve’s early work pioneered the efficient derivation of adherent stem cell lines from both normal neural tissue and malignant gliomas, underpinning the generation of high-quality cellular models for GBM research. Steve is the academic lead of the GCGR.
Dr Gillian Morrison is a scientist at the Centre for Regenerative Medicine, University of Edinburgh. She has >20 years of research experience in stem cell research, encompassing mammalian models of human disease, embryonic development and cellular differentiation of pluripotent stem cells and adult stem cells. Gillian is the lead scientist and manager of the GCGR.
Dr Paul Brennan is a Senior Clinical Lecturer and Honorary Consultant Neurosurgeon at the University of Edinburgh and NHS Lothian. Paul combines an active neurosurgical practice with clinical and laboratory research. His research includes studying the biology of glioma recurrence and developing novel strategies for chemotherapy delivery. Paul’s provision of surgical samples enabled the generation of the GCGR’s extensive collection of patient-derived tumour cell lines.
Prof Simona Parrinello is Chair of Neuro-oncology and Head of the Research Department of Cancer Biology at UCL Cancer Institute. Simona’s research focuses on adult neurogenesis and brain cancer, in particular, the mechanisms by which the microenvironment controls neural stem cell behavior and how these mechanisms become deregulated in glioblastoma. Simona is the UCL academic lead of the GCGR.
Dr Javier Herrero was Head of the Bill Lyons Informatics Centre, UCL Cancer Institute until 2023. Javier’s research focussed on the integration of different data sources for understanding the global changes and evolution of the cancer in patients. He has contributed to several large-scale genomics projects including Ensembl, ENCODE, the 1000 Genomes Project and TRACERx. Javier was the data analysis lead for GCGR.
Dr Lucia Conde is a Senior Research Fellow at the UCL Cancer Institute with extensive expertise in bioinformatics, particularly in the analysis of large-scale genomic data. She is especially interested in developing bioinformatics pipelines to create efficient, scalable, and reproducible data analysis solutions. Lucia managed the GCGR molecular data, performed data analyses, and developed the web portal.
Prof Stephan Beck is Chair of Medical Genomics at UCL and Director of the UK Personal Genome Project. Stephan played a leading role in the sequencing and analysis of the human genome at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and his current research focuses on the genomics and epigenomics of phenotypic plasticity in health and disease. Stephan was the molecular analysis lead for the GCGR.
Prof Sebastian Brandner is Chair of Neuropathy at UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology and head of the Neurodegenerative Diseases Division, UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology. He has research interests in neurodegeneration and neuro-oncology. Sebastian’s team derived GSC lines at UCL for the GCGR.