Dr Charlotte Brierley

I recently completed my Wellcome Trust Clinical Research Fellowship in the haematopoietic stem cell biology group supervised by Prof Adam Mead and Dr Bethan Psaila. This time was shaped by a visiting fellowship to Dr Elli Papaemmanuil’s group at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Centre in New York. My project focused on using single cell approaches to understand the genomic, proteomic and transcriptomic changes in blast-phase myeloproliferative neoplasms, a particularly aggressive type of acute leukaemia. 

Prior to this, I completed my undergraduate degree in medical sciences at the University of Cambridge and subsequent clinical medical training at Oxford. After qualifying I was awarded an NIHR Academic Foundation post in Edinburgh, and subsequently returned to Oxford as an Academic Clinical Fellow.

I am now an Academic Clinical Lecturer here in Oxford, which allows me to combine completion of my clinical training in haematology with developing my research interests. My research aims to understand how patients with acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) develop the disease, and why some respond better to treatment than others. Current treatment options for myeloid leukaemias are very intensive with often inadequate outcomes. We hope that a better understanding of the mechanisms of disease development, progression and response to therapy will lead to the identification of novel therapeutic targets, with the ultimate aim of translating this back to patients, to improve their treatment options and outcomes.