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Celebrating Career Milestones: February marks another successful PhD journey
Continuing our monthly celebration of career milestones, we would like to congratulate Dr Salwa Lin for successfully defending her DPhil thesis on Friday 2nd February, 2024, at the Old Road Campus Research Building (ORCRB). Dr Lin’s project, ‘The Development of the Lung Metastatic Niche in Murine Breast Cancer’, was primarily funded by Taif University (Saudi Arabia), with additional funding from the Breast Cancer Research Foundation (BCRF). Her research has identified key factors in the growth of early and advanced secondary lung cancer.
Approximately 90% of cancer mortality is due to cancer metastasis, a process by which cancerous cells break away from the original tumour and spread to other parts of the body via the blood or lymph system where they can form new, secondary tumours in tissues and organs. Patients with lung tumours formed as a result of this can be difficult to treat as they usually develop resistance to chemo-, immuno- and anti-angiogenic therapies. The latter therapy targets tumours to block the formation of new blood vessels, with the aim of slowing cancer growth and shrinking the tumour. Resistance to such treatment is understood to be brought about by a change in the metastatic niche, aka the tumour microenvironment (TME), which gives the tumour the ability to hijack and use pre-existing blood vessels in surrounding tissue in order to grow.
Dr Lin’s project focussed on the understudied role of the TME and blood vessel formation in metastatic growth. She identified potential vascular targets and key stromal cells, which make up connective tissue surrounding other tissues and organs and are critical to the formation and function of the TME, that drive the growth of early and advanced secondary lung cancer. These observations will enable the advancement of novel therapeutic approaches to target lung metastasis.
Dr Lin successfully defended her DPhil thesis project to examiners Professor Eileen Parkes (Oncology, University of Oxford) and Professor Peter Vermeulen (Department of Molecular Imaging – Pathology – Radiotherapy – Oncology (MIPRO), University of Antwerp), and her project supervisors, Professor Sarah De Val (IDRM), Professor Adrian Harris (Oncology) and Professor Alison Banham (Radcliffe Department of Medicine), helped to celebrate her achievement.
She is now busy sharing her research with the larger community at the EACR-AACR Basic and Translational Research Conference in Ireland (27-29th Feb) and is completing a manuscript for publication. She will be returning to Taif University where she will move from lecturer to assistant professor, teaching undergraduate students within the Department of Clinical Laboratory Sciences as well as establishing her niche cancer research. We wish Dr Lin all the best with her next steps!
