The Resistance Lab

Welcome to the Resistance Lab research page. Lead by Dr Lennard Lee at the University of Birmingham, the lab focuses on cancer metastasis, genome engineering, development of novel animal models of disease and pioneering the use of next generation Sequencing.

Our current research programs utilise the latest molecular techniques and models to gain an exquisite insight into cancer and disease.

RESISTANCE LAB GROUP MEMBERS

Lennard graduated from the University of Cambridge in 2005 (Natural Science Tripos (II) – Neuroscience). As part of this degree, he worked on the development of viral vectors for transgene deliver. Whilst at Cambridge he was awarded the Sun Hung Kai-Kwok Foundation Scholarship and Larmor Prize for “intellectual qualifications, moral conduct and practical activities”.

He then studied clinical medicine at the University of Oxford and graduated in 2008. On graduation and working as a clinician, he worked in the South West Thames Institute of Renal research researching the process of Epithelial Mesenchymal Transition (2011).

Lennard was then successful in his application to the Medical Research Council (UK) for a national Clinical Training Research Fellowship in 2013. He performed his DPhil with Professor Ian Tomlinson at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics, University of Oxford. He researched “Gene Drivers of Metastasis in Colorectal cancer” and lead to a Core Trainee Research Award (2016) and a section prize at the BSG (2017).

He then applied for a BRC Clinical Research Training Fellowship to work as a postdoc to enable him to develop his skills in bioinformatics, next generation sequencing and the creation of highly phenotyped Clinical Cohorts. This was performed at the University of Oxford under the supervision of Professor Ian Tomlinson and Professor David and Rachel Kerr.

Lennard was then recruited in 2018 to the University of Birmingham to work at the Institute of Cancer and Genomic Sciences and develop his research group as a Senior Clinical Training Research Fellow.

 

 

Thomas Starkey is the Research Associate and an exceptional MSc graduate from the University of Nottingham where he investigated germ cell attraction and the role of Hedgehog signalling. He has previously worked at Abbexa, Cambridge, before joining the lab in 2018. He is using bioinformatics and molecular biology techniques to aid our understanding of cancer metastasis.

 

 

Rebecca Davies is a MSc student studying Genomic Medicine at Queen Mary’s at London. She has got a strong academic record scoring top marks in her genomics modules and is leading research identifying transcriptomic expression changes associated with CRC metastases.

 

 

 

Summaya is a driven undergraduate at the University of Birmingham studying Medical Biochemistry. She is keen fundraiser for CRUK and is spending the summer learn about our approaches and investigating strategies to treat non-small cell lung cancer.

 

 

 

 

PREVIOUS GROUP MEMBERS

 

 

Sam Bethell is a talented final year student at the University of Birmingham studying Biomedical sciences.  He interested in cancer science and molecular genetics and a hugely enthusiastic and creative lab member. He is developing in-vitro co-culture assays to understand tumour interactions.

 

 

 

Tis Mirshahi is a determined final year student studying Biosciences at the University of Birmingham. She is keen to develop a career as a healthcare scientist in clinical biochemistry. She has developed expertise in protein quantification and localisation and helping greatly with the lab’s existing research programs.

 

 

 

Joanna Anderson is a talented medical student from Hertford College, University of Oxford who joined us from 2017. An asset to the lab, she is skilled in wet lab work as well as bioinformatics and next generation sequencing.

 

 

 

 

2018:- Joe Flint was a honorary research assistant who graduated with a first class degree from the University of Liverpool. He was involved in excellent work processing our metastatic sample cohorts and has gone on to work with the Birmingham Human Tissue Biorepository.

 

 

 

2017: Hendrik Bohm was one of our first visiting students. He studied at the Hans Bockler college, Germany. During his time with us, he helped design genome engineering vectors and contributed to our cancer cell culture experiments.