Meet our Dr Avons
The money that you raise from your Avon Pink Pamper Party will help to fund three Avon funded clinical fellows, affectionately know as 'Dr Avons'. As qualified medical Doctors as well as talented scientists, each 'Dr Avon' plays a vital link between science and medicine, bringing the benefits of research directly to women with breast cancer.| Dr Kai-Keen Shiu
Dr Kai-Keen Shiu is investigating why, for some people with breast cancer, the well-known and highly effective drug Herceptin can stop working over time. He is working to find ways to overcome this problem as it can be a major reason why cancer returns. Kai-Keen is now in his final year of his PhD which has been progressing well in the laboratory of Professor Alan Ashworth. He has identified genes that may be involved in the resistance to Herceptin and has been rigorously validating his findings. In the final stage of his PhD, Kai-Keen will hopefully confirm that these genes are linked to resistance to Herceptin and work out in what way they are involved. This will assist in developing some of these genes into new therapies. |
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| Dr Juanita Lopez
Dr Juanita Lopez is working to find ways to encourage cancer cells to die. Unlike normal cells, cancer cells don't die when they become seriously damaged which allows them to keep growing and eventually form a tumour. By finding ways to get cancer cells to turn this process back on, Dr Lopez's research could have important implications in the future for expanding treatment options for women with breast cancer. Juanita's project is now in her final year of her PhD under the supervision of Professor Pascal Meier. She is studying the role of a particular family of proteins that control apoptosis and have been shown to be faulty in some cancers. The way these proteins are switched on or off is critical as this often goes wrong in cancer cells. |
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| Dr Farah Rehman
Dr Farah Rehman is working in Alan Ashworth's team to discover if PARP inhibitors could work more effectively in combination with other drugs. A new class of drugs, PARP inhibitors have the potential to treat a third of all breast cancers. PARP inhibitors have shown a significant benefit in clinical trials and we believe they will be used in the clinic in the next few years. Although many patients benefit from PARP inhibitors, some do not respond, while others relapse after a period of treatment. Farah, now in the second year of her PhD, has been treating cancer cells with PARP inhibitors and other drugs to find more effective treatment combinations. Farah has identified several promising drug combinations and, over the next few months, will be looking into these in more detail. It is hoped that the she will identify some drugs that make PARP inhibitor treatment more effective that can be investigated further with the aim to get these into the clinic for patients as soon as possible. |
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