Submitted by Catherine Atkins on Mon, 02/12/2024 - 18:03
On 17th October we were delighted to host a visit to the Early Cancer Institute by two trustees of the Michael Cowan Foundation.
The Michael Cowan Foundation has generously supported our work by funding two PhD studentships. Both students commenced their PhD studies in October 2024, and the trustees were keen to meet with them and find out more about their research.
The students, Katie Honan and Zuzanna Krause, have joined the Frankell Group and the Watson Group respectively.
Katie completed her undergraduate degree in Biological Sciences at the University of Reading, where she developed an interest in cancer genomics. This led her to pursue a Master’s degree in bioinformatics at the University of Birmingham. She then put her studies to good use in the Cancer Molecular Diagnostics Laboratory (CMDL) at the University of Cambridge as a bioinformatician.
Zuzanna was born and raised in Poznan, in western Poland. She initially moved to the UK to study medicine at the University of Edinburgh. Her interest in haematology led her to London, where she pursued an intercalated BSc in Medical Sciences with a focus on Molecular and Translational Haematology. A three-month lab-based project on blood cancers deepened her passion for research and she decided to pursue a Master’s degree in applied genomics to learn more about the latest techniques for studying the genetic and molecular aspects of disease.
Katie’s PhD research centres around the use of bioinformatic approaches to uncover mechanisms driving tumour evolution. Her research will reveal common molecular routes for cancer development in various tissues across the body. her findings will be used to discover important targets for improvements in multi-cancer early detection blood tests which are a hot topic in cancer early detection.
In her PhD, Zuzanna will use advanced scientific techniques to study blood samples collected over time from people who were later found to be at high risk of developing a type of leukaemia called Acute Myeloid Leukaemia (AML). Unfortunately, AML is very aggressive and leads to death of 70-80% of patients within five years of diagnosis. Zuzanna’s research aims to identify genetic factors that either contribute to or prevent the development of this cancer in these high-risk individuals.
During the visit the trustees had lunch with Institute Director, Professor Rebecca Fitzgerald and met with the two students and their supervisors to discuss their work and vision.
Katie Honan commented: “It was wonderful to meet trustees so early in my PhD. It was great to explain my goals to them, and of course to thank them and the Micheal Cowan Foundation for generously funding my studies. I hope to be able to see them again when I am a little further on in my research to give them an update!”
The trustees, James Beazley and Martin Foreman, were impressed with what they learned during their visit and we are thrilled to report that the Foundation has agreed to fund two more PhD students to start in autumn 2025.