Paulina Vicenova
Academic and Work Experience Prior to Sept 2024 Programme Start
I obtained my BA in Cell and Systems Biology at the University of Oxford, where I completed an undergraduate research project on the role of ANAPC1 in proliferation and cell cycle regulation in prostate cancer. I was supervised by Dr Claire Edwards (NDORMS) and Dr Srinivasa Rao Rao (NDS). During my undergrad, in summer 2023, I completed a 3-month internship on hematopoietic stem cells in Prof. Roi Gazit’s lab at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (Beer Sheva, Israel). The same year, I also represented Oxford University in iGEM—an international competition in synthetic biology. Together with nine other students, we worked on developing a biosensor for faster and more efficient detection of bacterial contamination in water. For this project, we were awarded silver at the Paris Jamboree.
PhD Programme- Year 1- MRes and Project Rotations
During my first rotation project, supervised by Dr Joanna Jackow-Malinowska from St John’s Institute of Dermatology, I worked on developing a new gene-editing therapy for dominant dystrophic epidermolysis bullosa. I presented the data generated during my rotation at the 2025 meeting of the British Society for Investigative Dermatology. During my second rotation project, supervised by Dr John Maher from the Comprehensive Cancer Center, I worked on developing new autologous Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR) T-cell therapies. My projectwas hosted by the company Leucid Bio, where John is the Chief Scientific Officer. In my third and final rotationproject, I was supervised by Dr Grace Hui-Chun Lu and Prof. Andrea Streit, both based at the Centre for Craniofacial and Regenerative Biology. Here, I analysed scRNA-seq data generated from embryonic chick cranial placodes.
PhD Programme- Years 2 to 4- Doctoral Studies
For my PhD project, I am co-supervised by Dr John Maher, Dr Grace Hui-Chun Lu, and Professor Sheeba Irshad (Comprehensive Cancer Center). I am going to investigate how a new fourth-generation CAR interacts with the tumour microenvironment of triple-negative breast cancer. The CAR under investigation is a murinized version of LEU011, an NKG2D-based CAR currently in clinical trials run by Leucid Bio. I will be armouring murinizedLEU011 with the pro-inflammatory cytokine IL-18 in an effort to improve its anti-tumour activity. I will be testing this armoured CAR T cell in vivo in syngeneic mouse models of triple-negative breast cancer. I hope to study the interactions between the CAR and the tumour microenvironment using flow cytometry, spatial immunohistochemistry, and spatial transcriptomics.
