Pre-Cancer Immunology

James trained at King's College London studying T cell regulation in autoimmunity, transplantation, and chronic infection before completing a postdoc with Sergio Quezada working on neoantigen specific T cell dysfunction in the TRACERx team led by Charles Swanton. He is a UKRI Future Leaders Fellow and co-leads several national, and global consortia in cancer interception and immunology.

Constantin is a computational researcher working on detecting patterns in single-cell RNA-seq and TCR seq data from pre-cancer to detect and intercept tumor development. Before joining UCL, he obtained his PhD at EMBL Heidelberg where he developed statistical methods for the analysis of single-cell data.

Dr Cha obtained her PhD from Samsung Medical Centre in Seoul, before training in computational immunogenomics in the Litchfield and Swanton Labs at the Francis Crick Institute. Hongui's work involves acquiring, curating and analysing data to explore the immune landscape within pre-invasive lesions. Dr Cha aims to elucidate the underlying mechanisms of T-cell mediated anti-tumour immune responses and to identify potential biomarkers or therapeutic targets for precision cancer interception.

Marco earned his BSc in Medical Biotechnology and MSc in Molecular Biology from the University of Milan, including a year as a visiting MRes student at Amsterdam UMC. He completed his PhD at the CRUK Beatson Institute in Glasgow under Dr Leo Carlin, studying tolerogenic dendritic cells in PDAC metastasis in vivo. Marco is now exploring the roles of myeloid and epithelial cells in shaping T-helper cell responses in early-stage NSCLC, using patient-derived explants and preclinical mouse models.

Marta received her BSc in Biotechnology from University College London before pursuing a PhD in Muscosal Immunology at the Francis Crick Institute. Marta is using in vivo and in vitro models to study responses to immune checkpoint inhibitors and identifying new therapeutic targets for NSCLC interception with a focus on unconventional T-cells.

Andrei is an MRC-DTP funded PhD student whose research is focused on how spatial multiomics can inform the prevention of lung cancer. Andrei's PhD project aims to understand the immune system during cancer development, a context in which spatial information is crucial, requiring both web lab and extensive computational work. Andrei is supervised by Dr James Reading (UCL Cancer Institute) and Dr Susan Heavey (Division of Surgery).

Petros is a UKRI MRC Clinical PhD fellow undertaking a project in target identification for cancer interception therapies using spatial transcriptomics in non-small cell lung cancer, with a specific focus on optimising responses to neoantigen vaccines. He obtained his medical degree from the University of Cambridge. During his early clinical training, he also undertook a MSc in Genomic Medicine at Imperial College London. He is currently a Medical Oncology specialty registrar in London.

Evie is a CRUK UCL Centre-funded PhD student co-supervised by Crispin Hiley. Evie is harnessing the exquisite sensitivity of the immune system for early detection of lung cancer, using samples from the Nodule Immunophenotyping Biomarker for Lung Cancer Early Diagnosis Study (NIMBLE). Evie completed her BSc in Medical Science at Exeter University, during which she completed a professional training year at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital.

Hongchang has a MEng Biochemical Engineering from UCL and is co-supervised by Dr Kevin Litchfield. He has expertise in fluidic engineering and flow cytometry. He is implementing and applying advanced tools for recapitulating the original tumour microenvironment in ex vivo tumour fragment models. He aims to develop a next generation ex vivo model for cancer immunotherapy to study the peripheral contributions and cell fate determination of systemic T cell encountering the tumour microenvironment.

Sam is a computational PhD student supervised by Dr James Reading and Dr Mark Linch. His project aims to harness the peripheral immune system to build a multiomic immune model for the early detection of cancer, with a specific focus on prostate cancer. Sam's project centres around computational analysis of T cell receptor sequencing (TCR-seq) data. Sam competed his undergraduate degree in Exeter before completing an MSc in Cancer at UCL.

Anakin is a BRC-funded PhD student seeking to understand how the development of kidney cancer re-shapes the systemic immune system. He aims to design a blood signature that will enable the early detection of renal cell carcinoma. Anakin has a particular interest in the development of tertiary lymphoid structures and the role of B cells in carcinogenesis. Anakin attained his MSc in Immunology at Imperial before working on deep immunological phenotyping in Influenza and HIV-1 infection.

Daniel received his Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS) from King's College London. He then undertook General Surgical Training and an NIHR Academic Clinical Fellowship in Birmingham. He has taken time out of medical training to pursue a PhD looking into precision early-stage therapeutics for targets in the tumour microenvironment of pancreatic cancer and its precursor lesions. Daniel is currently being co-supervised by Prof. Stephen Pereira and Dr James Reading.

Claudia is an MRC-DTP PhD student, who received her BSc in Medical Biosciences from Imperial College London and trained in in vivo and in vitro Immunology through laboratory rotations at UCL. Claudia is characterising the peripheral T cell compartment of patients with pre-invasive lung neoplasia via multi-omics and machine learning to inform blood tests that she hopes will detect development and progression of pre-cancerous lesions.

Amber is a CRUK City of London Centre PhD student aiming to define T cell antigen reactivity in pre-invasive lung neoplasia. She has a BSc in Cancer Biology and Immunology from Bristol University with a placement year under Prof. Andy Sewell in Cardiff before joining Achilles Therapeutics. She is developing state-of-the-art T cell antigen specificity profiling platforms and aims to track neoantigen reactive T cell clones through carcinogenesis in patient samples and autochthonous mouse models.

Abi is a CRUK funded PhD student focused on the exploration of translational cancer prevention. She uses in vitro patient-derived explant systems and in vivo mouse models to monitor differential cellular compartments in carcinogenesis. She aims to identify novel immune targets for precise interception of pre-invasive to invasive disease. Abi has an MSc in Genomic Medicine from Imperial College and experience in CRISPR-Cas9 based screening platforms at the Functional Genomics Centre, Cambridge.

Teerapon is a bioinformatics PhD student funded by the Royal Thai government. Teerapon’s work is focused on computational multi-omics analysis of systemic and local pre-invasive T cell dynamics in pulmonary pre-malignancy to identify potential targets for cancer interception. Teerapon is interested in how T cell regulation and immune escape drive lung cancer development. Teerapon completed his MRes in Bioinformatics at Imperial College London.

Eleanor is an ACED funded PhD student working towards furthering our understanding of tumour reactive T cell phenotypes within pre-invasive lung cancer, delineating their role in advancing or delaying carcinogenesis. She is a qualified Veterinary Surgeon, graduating from the Royal Veterinary College, London. She has developed a platform for characterising T cell receptor repertoires in both solid and circulating canine cancers and has been recognised at the International Canine Health Awards.

Amalie has a BSc Biotechnology and MSc Human Biology from University of Copenhagen and a PhD in Immune Technology from the Technical University of Denmark where she developed novel tools for investigating antigen-specific T cell recognition. She now implements and applies advanced tools for high-throughput mapping of T cell recognition and reactivity in the early stages of cancer, aiming to map the phenotypic and functional characteristics of the cancer-responsive T cells to determine their role