Open to approach for:

- Potential DPhil projects

- Clinical Academic Trainees

- MSc/FSH student projects

- Visiting students/fellows

Current team:

Aleema Iqbal, CRUK DPhil candidate, University of Oxford

Aleema is a CRUK funded DPhil candidate working on identifying immune biomarkers of disease progression/relapse in adult diffuse gliomas. 

Safiyah Mohamed, CRUK DPhil candidate, University of Oxford

We are delighted to welcome back Safiyah, who will be undertaking a 4-year DPhil project working on multi-modal data integration across digital pathology, genomic, metabolomic and proteomic datasets, to develop critical insights into Brain Cancer. 

Visitors:

Wan Su is a postgraduate M.D. student of Endocrinology at Peking Union Medical College Hospital. She will be visiting the lab supported by a Chinese Scholarship Council fellowship. 

Final Honours Students:

Hannah Sandhu is currently undertaking her Final Honours research project within the group, focusing on the role of mechanosensing proteins in driving glioma invasion.

Enqing Swea is also completing their Final Honours research project within the group, developing a glioma stem cell model to study cell-cell interactions within the tumour microenvironment.

Alumni:

Phoebe Baggott, MSc in Biochemistry, Hertford College, University of Oxford 

Phoebe was co-supervised with Prof Rachael Bashford-Rogers, and worked on developing a novel high-throughput Adaptive Immune Receptor Repertoire (AIRR) sequencing platform. 

Safiyah Mohamed, MSc in Biomedical Sciences, University of Amsterdam

Safiyah joined as a Master's student, conducting a meta-analysis of the transcriptomic landscape of the immune microenvironment in adult diffuse gliomas. She successfully completed her MSc and will be rejoining the lab in 2025 as a DPhil student

The adaptive immune system is responsible for recognising and eliminating foreign pathogens while maintaining self-tolerance to prevent autoimmunity. However, in some cases, the immune system fails to recognise self-antigens, leading to autoimmune diseases. On the other hand, cancer cells can evade immune surveillance by developing mechanisms to avoid detection by the immune system. Therefore, by studying the interplay between the immune system, autoimmune diseases, and cancer, we can gain insights into the mechanisms that lead to these diseases.

To address these questions, we are using a variety of techniques such as whole genome sequencing, adaptive immune receptor repertoire sequencing, single-cell/bulk RNA sequencing, and in vitro cellular models. By analysing large multimodal datasets, we hope to identify novel targets for therapeutic intervention and develop approaches for early cancer detection with the aim towards better personalised treatment strategies for patients.

I am an NIHR Academic Clinical Lecturer in Neurology, and my research interests are focused on understanding the underlying mechanisms of autoimmune/inflammatory diseases of the central nervous system and brain cancer. Specifically, I am interested in studying the role of the adaptive immune system and how immune tolerance to self can be modelled using the dichotomous nature of autoimmunity versus cancer.

I have previously undertaken my DPhil across the Oxford Autoimmune Neurology group and the Bashford-Rogers group, where I explored the role of immune tolerance in CASPR2-antibody encephalitis and SARs-CoV-2 infection. My aim is to translate my findings to wider states of Neuro-immunological dysfunction, with a view to identify new targets for immunomodulation and better treatment strategies.

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