
Research Area VI - Biological Systems
Research Area VI covers the broad areas of biological clocks, gene therapy, embryogenesis, organogenesis, innate immunity, immune responses, inflammation, disease processes, ageing, cancer, plants, molecular medicine, neurodegeneration, parasitology, plant pathology, nutrition, cell division differentiation and death, cardiovascular disease, developmental biology, diabetes, matrix structure and tissue engineering.
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Research Area VI - Biological Systems
9 members

Irundika Dias
Irundika Dias
Irundika’s research interests are on redox biology related to chronic inflammatory diseases. She uses lipidomic tools to identify modified lipid biomarkers in ageing and disease. She graduated from the University of Colombo, Sri Lanka with a BSc in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. She completed Immunology MSc in Brunel University, UK followed by a PhD from Aston University, UK. During her post-doctoral and Fellowship work at Aston University, she worked on metabolic pathways that leads to chronic inflammation and specialised on lipidomic studies and biomarker analysis. She is currently a lecturer at Aston medical school. She acts as the chair of Biochemical Society Theme Panel-Research Area VI.
Keywords: Redox Biology, Lipidomics, Biomarkers

Fred Arce Vargas
Fred Arce Vargas

Keywords: Immunology, immune regulation, cancer immunotherapy, T cells, gene therapy

Andrea Caporali
Andrea Caporali

Andrea Caporali obtained his PhD in the laboratory of Prof Costanza Emanueli at the University of Bristol in 2009, where he acquired expertise in cardiovascular and translational medicine research. At the University of Bristol, Dr Caporali has contributed to demonstrating the mechanisms driving endothelial impairment in diabetes. This has further inspired him to investigate the deregulation of microRNAs in vascular disease as a postdoctoral fellow in the Emanueli laboratory. In 2012, he was awarded the British Heart Foundation Intermediate Fellowship at the University of Bristol. In 2013, he moved to the University of Edinburgh by securing the tenure track programme Chancellor’s Fellowship. He is currently a Senior Lecturer at the Centre for Cardiovascular Science at the University of Edinburgh. During the last years, Caporali lab adopted cellular and pre-clinical models to characterise vascular signalling behind ECs dysfunction and try to revert it by taking a drug or gene therapy approach.
Keywords: non-coding RNAs, cardiovascular disease, endothelial cells

Hannah Fox Dugdale
Hannah Fox Dugdale
Hannah completed a PhD at Liverpool John Moores University where she investigated the effectiveness of the polyphenol resveratrol in preventing muscle atrophy within an in vitro model of caloric restriction. On completion of her PhD in 2017, Hannah undertook a post-doctoral position at the University of Oxford. This work was in collaboration with Summit therapeutics with the aim to elucidate novel regulatory pathways understanding the mechanistic action of potential drug candidates designed to modulate utrophin in the hopes of mitigating the pathology in Duchenne muscular dystrophy. Hannah then moved to Kings College London in 2019 where she worked with Dr Julien Ochala utilising single muscle fibre techniques to examine physiological dysfunction and associated causes of congenital myopathies. Hannah took up a role as Lecturer in the area of molecular and cellular physiology in the School of Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences in 2022, where she focuses on skeletal muscle regenerative rehabilitation
Keywords: Skeletal muscle, muscle disease, regenerative rehabilitation

Steven Kelly
Steven Kelly

Keywords: Evolution, bioinformatics, photosynthesis

Ayse Latif
Ayse Latif

Keywords: Cancer cell biology and therapy, metabolic reprogramming and protein trafficking

Chris Morris
Chris Morris

Chris Morris is a Lead Data Scientist. He received an MA in Mathematics from the Queen's College, Oxford. He has worked as a computer programmer and data scientist, and for twenty years most of his clients have been life scientists. He now focusses on natural language processing for drug discovery.
Keywords: Machine Learning, Drug Discovery, Pathophysiology, Natural Language Processing

Vanja Pekovic-Vaughan
Vanja Pekovic-Vaughan

Keywords: Circadian rhythms, redox signalling, human single gene disorders, matrix organisation, ageing, tissue regeneration, cell differentiation, chronotherapy, transcriptional control, antioxidants

Kimia Witte
Kimia Witte
Kimia's research interests centre around understanding the mechanosensitivity of cells during the organogenesis of connective tissues, with a particular focus on the nervous system. They are also interested in engineering Blood-Brain Barrier organoid models using microfluidics in a high-throughput manner, capable of generating 1 to 10 organoids per second. This approach enables applications in disease modelling and drug discovery. Kimia is a Chancellor's Fellow and Lecturer in the Biomedical Engineering Department at the University of Strathclyde, with an affiliation in the School of Molecular Biosciences at the University of Glasgow. They are also a Principal Investigator at the Centre for the Cellular Microenvironment at the University of Glasgow. They hold a BSc (Hons) degree in Molecular & Cellular Biology with Biotechnology from the University of Glasgow, a PhD in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Glasgow, and a BA (Hons) degree in Fine Art from the Glasgow School of Art.
Keywords: Mechanobiology, Tissue and Organoid Engineering, Stem Cell, Blood-Brain-Barrier, Synthetic Biology, Microfluidics, Biomaterials