Victoria Tsang
Academic and Work Experience Prior to Oct 2019
I completed my Bachelor’s degree in Biomedical Sciences at Queen Mary, University of London. Whilst there, I did my final year dissertation at William Harvey Research Institute on exploring the process of ubiquitination on the NF-κB activation downstream of TLR7 signalling.
I joined an MRes in Cancer Biology at Imperial College London to acquire more diverse laboratory skills. For my first master rotation at the Francis Crick Institute, I had the opportunity to work with CyTOF and imaging mass cytometry to investigate the immune profile of Kras driven lung tumours from mice. Along with the design of an antibody panel and the optimisation of the protocol, I learned the use of current softwares and developed image analysis pipelines.
I further expanded my interest in the immune infiltrate at a molecular level where I studied how Ras signalling modulates inflammation and efferocytosis in macrophages. At Barts Cancer Institute, my dissertation involved the co-culture of apoptotic cancer cells with bone marrow-derived macrophages from an inducible mouse model in which the RAS-PI3K interaction can be disrupted.
Following my degree, I explored the effects of acute or chronic UV irradiation on immune cell populations in mice models as a research assistant with Dr Emanuel Rognoni in the Centre for Stem Cells and Regenerative Medicine. I also established decellularised dermis organotypics in culture from adult and neonatal mouse skin to study fibroblasts ex vivo in 3D under homeostatic conditions.
PhD Programme – Years 2 to 4 – Doctoral Studies
My PhD project will investigate Glioblastoma cells migration with supervisors, Dr Davide Danovi and Dr Ciro Chiappini. Glioblastoma Multiforme (GBM) is the most common and most aggressive brain tumour in adults. Despite current advances, survival remains over a year from diagnosis and treatment-resistant residual GBM subpopulations infiltrate axon bundles inevitably causing recurrence. Research is critically needed to develop innovative therapies targeting these infiltrating cells. This project will explore the signalling cues and pathways that are essential for GBM cells migration and infiltration on nerve bundles.
We aim to:
develop a robust workflow to characterise and quantify the migration of a panel of GBM cells using high content imaging pipelines;
define variation in the migration properties in populations and subpopulations of several patient-derived GBM cultures;
decorate artificial substrates with the identified relevant signals to obtain a comparable GBM cells migration to that on a nerve and compare migration of cells on those migratory substrates. Stem cell-derived axon bundles will be used as migratory substrates and in parallel, polycaprolactone electrospun nanofibers with defined physical properties will be bio-functionalised with peptide and protein signals.
The main deliverable of this project is to define the relevant signals which guide the migration of GBM cells. The translational output is an assessment of the robustness of this platform as a screening bed for chemical compounds specifically acting on the migration of glioblastoma cells. Moreover, the definition of a ‘fake-nerve’ substrate approach could potentially also offer innovative precision-medicine approaches towards new therapies and medical devices.
