Student scoops biochemistry award

A 4th year PhD student working in the School of Life Sciences has been named Promega UK Young Biochemist of the year at the Bioscience 2004 conference.

Kirsteen Campbell was one of only seven finalists selected from 140 applicants and was chosen as the overall winner by a panel of judges. Kirsteen gave a presentation highlighting her role in the discovery of how a group of proteins previously believed to cause cancer can also be used in the fight against cancer. NF-kappaB - a group of proteins present in every cell in the human body - can actually assist some cancer therapies such as chemo and radiotherapy. They believe that this discovery will allow clinicians to predict more accurately how tumours will respond to cancer therapy - thereby improving treatment for cancer patients.

Working in the laboratory of Dr Neil Perkins, a Principal Investigator in the Division of Gene Regulation and Expression in the School of Life Sciences, the discovery was made in a laboratory using cells in culture. Neil and his team now hope to establish that what they have found in the lab is also the case in the human body.

Kirsteen will complete her PhD thesis in this month.