Katherine Ferris
Research
As part of the D'Angiolella lab group, which focuses on E3 ubiquitin ligases, I am exploring ways in which this versatile protein family can be used to sensitise glioblastoma to ionising radiation. Glioblastoma is the most common brain tumour in adults and has a devastatingly poor prognosis due to the limited efficacy of current treatment strategies, including radiotherapy. It is hoped that increasing the sensitivity of the tumour cells to radiation will help to address this issue.
Background
I graduated from the University of Oxford in 2019 with an undergraduate Masters in Biochemistry, having worked on the role of PPARa in bone cell differentiation for my research project. During my degree, I also completed an internship at the European Bioinformatics Institute in Hinxton, Cambridge, where I contributed to the M-CSA enzyme database. I subsequently spent a year in the Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine in Oxford, working on a project to increase the immune response to glioblastoma.