UNCITI-BROCETA GROUP
Edinburgh Cancer Research UK Centre, MRC Institute of Genetics & Molecular Medicine
University of Edinburgh
SENIOR STAFF
Dr Cath
Adam
Chemistry Lab Manager
Cath obtained her MChem from the University of Edinburgh, spending a year in Process R&D at AZ. She remained in Edinburgh for her PhD in the Cockroft group, using molecular balances to probe the effect of solvents on non-covalent interactions. She began her first postdoc in 2014 with the Clayden group in Manchester (moving with them to Bristol), in the field of foldamer chemistry. During this project she strengthened her expertise in supramolecular chemistry by investigating the communication of information between helical-peptide foldamers, and also gained research skills at the chemistry-biology interface, while exploring their ability to form ion-channels across lipid membranes. She joins the lab as a postdoc funded by CRUK, to develop Pd-activatable precursors of bioactive small molecules for cancer therapy.
Dr Álvaro
Lorente-Macías
Lead Synthetic Chemist
Álvaro completed his BSc in Pharmacy (2014) and MSc in Drug Research, Development, Control and Innovation (2015) at the Universidad de Granada, where he then obtained his PhD working on the design, synthesis and biological evaluation of 6-alkoxypurines as kinase inhibitors. During his PhD, he visited the ECRC and exploited CuAAC reactions for the rapid diversification of small molecule libraries; and Structural Genomic Consortium - University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he worked on the optimisation of several kinase inhibitors for different applications. Álvaro joined the Unciti-Broceta lab in 2019 and is currently working on the development of novel small molecule inhibitors for the treatment of glioblastoma and other cancers
POSTDOCS
Dr Yang Ge
Yang joined the Unciti-Broceta lab in 2023 and is currently working on the development of novel small molecule ILK inhibitors for the treatment of glioblastoma multiforme.
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Dr Saúl Marchal
Saúl joined the Unciti-Broceta lab in 2022 to work in a collaborative project with Nuvectis Pharma to discover new indications for NXP900.
PHD STUDENTS
Stephen Croke
Stephen grew up in Dublin. He studied Medicinal Chemistry at Trinity College Dublin, where he undertook a final year research project into developing DNA FIT-probes. He then went on to continue his studies at Imperial College London where he completed an MRes in Drug Discovery and Development. During his time there he worked on the development of novel therapies for ER+ breast cancer. He joined the Unciti-Broceta lab as a MSCA fellow under the THERACAT project. His PhD will focus on the development of novel bio-orthogonal catalysis-based tools for cancer therapy.
Melissa van de L'Isle
Melissa grew up in the Netherlands and obtained her BSc in Chemistry and MSc in Chemical Biology, respectively from the University of Applied Sciences Hogeschool Utrecht and Leiden University. Her master thesis concerned the synthesis of non-covalent inhibitors for glucosylceramide synthase. She did an Erasmus internship focusing on the synthesis of 3’-C-ethynyl adenosine analogues at Ghent University (Belgium). Afterwards, she went on to work as technical assistant/ lab technician at LDC Dortmund (Germany). She joined the Unciti-Broceta group as a MSCA fellow as part of the THERACAT consortium in 2019 to work on the development and evaluation of new catalytic devices capable to mediate bioorthogonal chemistry in cell culture and in vivo.
Ben
King
Ben was born in Melbourne but grew up in Shrewsbury, Shropshire. He completed a Medical Sciences BSc at the University of Leeds, taking particular interest in cancer and underlying signalling networks. Ben subsequently continued his studies at Imperial College London, obtaining an MRes in Cancer Biology (Cancer Informatics). Through his MRes, including a project investigating differential genome-wide methylation patterns in HGSOC, he developed a deep interest in the application of bioinformatics and machine learning in cancer research. He joined the Unciti-Broceta lab in 2021; his PhD will focus on identifying pan-cancer genomic, epigenomic, and transcriptomic signatures that predict eCF506 sensitivity and resistance.
Iñigo Lanzagorta-Calvillo
Iñigo grew up in Madrid (Spain) and spent his teenage years in Houston (USA), before moving to the UK for university. He graduated in 2020 from the University of Sussex with a 1st class MSc (Hons) in Biochemistry. Following his studies, Iñigo worked in the biopharmaceutical industry for 16 months. He first worked at Evotec (UK) within their Structural Biology department, focusing on bacterial expression systems and protein purification; later, he worked at Allergy Therapeutics within their R&D department, specialising on method development for the quality control of vaccines and allergens. He joined the Unciti-Broceta lab in the autumn of 2021 to undertake his PhD, which will investigate the selective SRC/nonABL inhibitor, eCF506.
Jonathon Mock
Jonathon joined the Unciti-Broceta lab in Sep 2022 to undertake his PhD, which will focus on developing new superselective mTOR inhibitors.
Ben Jones
Ben joined the Unciti-Broceta lab in Aug 2023 to visit the lab as part of a collaboration with Prof Juan Mareque (Swansea). Ben will work on novel nanotechnologies to tackle cancer.
Ana Belén Díaz
Ana Belén joined the Unciti-Broceta lab in Sep 2023 as a visiting PhD student. She will work on the preclinical development of NXP900 for breast cancer treatment.
