Ina Guri
Academic and Work Experience Prior to Sept 2021 Programme Start
I completed my MEng in Biomedical Engineering at Queen Mary, University of London with my thesis in the lab of Prof Julien Gautrot. I then spent 3 years working in medical device development within the Medical Physics department at the RVI in Newcastle.
Here I was awarded an ICURe grant from Innovate UK to act as an entrepreneurial lead on a project to develop a new technology to improve organ transplantation outcomes.
PhD Programme- Year 1- MRes and Project Rotations
During my first year of the Advanced Therapies for Regenerative Medicine PhD Programme, I wanted to get a wide variety of experience, so I rotated in 3 different labs:
My first rotation was with Dr Joanna Jacków and Prof John McGrath, working on a novel gene editing approach (base editing) to correct a COL7A1 mutation in recessive dystrophic epidermolysis bullosa (RDEB) patient fibroblasts.
My second rotation was with Dr Eileen Gentleman, where I developed a reductionist model of aortic aneurysm to test the effect of PEG hydrogel chemistry and flow on bovine vascular smooth muscle cells.
In my third rotation with Prof Francesca Spagnolli and Dr Alessandra Vigilante, I conducted single cell transcriptomic analysis of the developing human pancreas.
PhD Programme- Years 2 to 4 - Doctoral Studies
My PhD is co-supervised by Dr Joanna Jacków and Prof John McGrath, studying novel gene editing approaches, such as base editing, for dystrophic epidermolysis bullosa (DEB), a serious genetic skin condition caused by mutations in the COL7A1 gene. I will also be developing a delivery system for the gene editors, using lipid nanoparticles, to test in-vivo approaches of gene editing as this has a higher potential for clinical translation. I hope this work will bring us closer to clinical trials and eventually new treatments for DEB.
