Manav Pathania

PI
Manav received a BA in Biology from Grinnell College, in Iowa, and received his PhD in Cell Biology from Yale University, in Connecticut. At Yale he investigated microRNA control of postnatal neural stem cell differentiation and survival in Professor Angelique Bordey’s lab. His first postdoctoral appointment was in Professor Josef Kittler’s lab at UCL in London, where he explored the neurobiological consequences of autism and schizophrenia candidate gene misexpression in vitro and in vivo. Following that, in his second postdoctoral appointment Manav developed in vivo models of paediatric high-grade glioma in Professor Paolo Salomoni’s lab at the UCL Cancer Institute. He then set up his independent group at the University of Cambridge where his team focuses on identifying novel targeted therapy approaches for paediatric gliomas and interrogating the role of the tumour microenvironment.

​Fun fact: Manav has lived in India, Hong Kong, South Africa, Malaysia, Singapore and the United States, before settling in the UK.

Jade-Ellen Brown

PhD Student
Jade received a BSc from the University of Nottingham, where she conducted her dissertation project on the effect of modulating VEGF-A splicing on endothelial cell migration. She then completed an MRes in Cancer Biology at Imperial College London, undertaking two research projects: the first under Dr. Alexis Barr, investigating the regulation of cell cycle entry in breast cancer, and the second at the ICR under Dr. Rachael Natrajan, studying the effects of splicing factor mutations on breast cancer therapy resistance. In the Pathania Lab, Jade is a PhD student studying the role of genetic and transcriptional heterogeneity in driving H3K27M paediatric glioma disease progression and therapy resistance.

Antonella De Cola

Postdoc
Antonella received her MSc and PhD degrees in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from the University of Rome Tor Vergata (Italy), where she also qualified as a Medical Biotechnologist. During her PhD she identified roles for specific proteins in cell cycle regulation, cell death and histone gene transcription with Professor Gerry Melino. Her first postdoctoral position was with Professor Vincenzo De Laurenzi at CeSI-MeT University of Chieti-Pescara, where she studied microRNAs in patient-derived breast cancer stem cells. Specifically, she investigated the function of particular microRNAs in cancer stem cell survival, differentiation and therapy resistance both in vitro and in vivo. Her work has resulted in a number of publications and productive collaborations. In the Pathania Lab, Antonella will bring her considerable cancer biology expertise to bear and probe the roles of chromatin remodelling complexes in paediatric brain tumour initiation, maintenance and relapse.

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Carmo Cunha

Research Assistant
Carmo received a BSc in Biological Sciences from Imperial College London, where she wrote her dissertation on NK cell immunotherapy for ovarian cancer under the supervision of Professor Hugh Brady. She then completed an MSc in Cancer at the Anthony Nolan Research Institute at UCL, where with Dr Diana Hernandez she investigated KIR haplotypes and their functional properties in umbilical cord blood-derived NK cells. In the Pathania Lab, Carmo is investigating the role of partnering mutations and microenvironmental interactions in paediatric high-grade gliomas.

Michael McNicholas

​PhD Student (formerly Research Assistant)
Michael has recently graduated with a BSc from the University of Surrey where he carried out a wide variety of projects as part of a research-intensive undergraduate degree in Biochemistry. These included studying the DNA damage response in cancer cell lines with Lisiane Meira at Surrey, and the role of the opioid system and G-protein coupled receptors in addiction and associative learning in Brigitte Kieffer's lab at McGill. His undergraduate research has contributed to two publications with two more in preparation. In the Pathania Lab he will be working on understanding how histone mutations rewire the epigenome to induce DIPGs and the role of different co-occurring mutations in this process.

Lucie Pepino

Postdoc
Lucie received her MSc and PhD degrees in Neuroscience from the University of Aix-Marseille (France). Her PhD project addressed sex-linked differences in an inflammatory pain model in Dr. Aziz Moqrich’s lab (advised by Dr. Ana Reynders). Her project was designed to explore differences in pain perception at various levels of analysis, including global behaviour, hormone contribution, and spinal gene expression, in response to inflammatory-evoked pain. By further exploring one of the top upregulated genes in males, she identified a male-female difference in neutrophil recruitment to the spinal meninges, and more specifically to the pia mater. In the Pathania lab, Lucie will investigate how partner mutations in H3K27M and H3.3G34R gliomas modify interactions between brain tumour cells and their microenvironment (blood vessels, microglia, neurons, astrocytes and infiltrating immune cells).

Vasudha Tandon

Postdoc
Vasudha will start working with us in January 2025 (bio coming soon)

Vello

Lab mascot
Vello is a Lagotto Romagnolo who hasn't yet learned to hunt for truffles. He is the lab mascot and is very excited about everything.

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Alumni

Amelia Foss
NIH OxCam Fellow

Kyle McGeehan
MPhil Student - Gates Cambridge Fellow

Cameron Lloyd
Research Assistant