Biography
Natasha Aley is a research associate working in Dr Ingo Ringshausen's laboratory. She will be investigating mechanisms of tumour microenvironment (TME) remodelling in B cell lymphoma and its contribution to therapy resistance.
Prior to this position, Natasha completed her PhD on Cancer Biology in Dr Robin Ketteler's laboratory at University College London (UCL). Her research investigated the effects of ATG4B inhibition in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC). Her work led to her being awarded the Young Investigator and Best Speaker award at the 39th Tiers Winterschool on Proteinases and Their Inhibitors in 2022.
Prior to this she was working as a research assistant with Prof. Sebastian Brandner, isolating glioma initiating stem cells from human tumour tissue. Alongside this position, she also gained a distinction MSc in Cancer, molecular and cellular biology from Queen Mary university of London.
Publications
Innes J, Lowe A.S, Fonseca R, Aley N, El-Hassan T, Constantinou M, Lau J, Eddaoudi A, Marino S, Brandner S. (2020) Phenotyping clonal populations of glioma stem cell reveals a high degree of plasticity in response to changes in microenvironment. Laboratory Investigation. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0023683722000794?via%...
Vinel C, Rosser G, Guglielmi L, Pomella N, Constantinou M, Zhang X, Boot J, Jones T, Milner T, Dumas A, Rakyan V, Rees J, Lim Y.M, Thompson J, Vuononvirta J, Nadkarni S, El-Hassan T, Aley N, Lin Y.Y, Liu P, Sheer D, Merry C, Marelli-Berg F, Brandner S, Marino S. (2021) Comparative analysis of glioblastoma initiating cells and patient-matched expanded-potential stem cell -derived neural stem cells as a discovery tool and drug matching strategy. Nat Commun. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-26297-6
Dumas A, Pomella N, Rosser G, Guglielmi L, Vinel C, Millner T.O, Rees J, Aley N, Sheer D, Wei J, Marisetty A, Heimberger A, Bowman R.L, Brandner S, Joyce J, Marino S. (2020) Microglia promote glioblastoma growth via mTOR-mediated immunosuppressive conditioning of the tumour microenvironment. EMBO J. https://www.embopress.org/doi/full/10.15252/embj.2019103790
Zhang Y, Pusch S, Innes J, Ellis M, Lau J, El-Hassan T, Aley N, Launchbusy F, Richard-Londt A, Chen S, De Boer J, Wang L, Li N, Brandner S. (2019) Mutant IDH sensitises gliomas to ER stress and apoptosis by miR183-mediated inhibition of SEM3E. Cancer Research. https://aacrjournals.org/cancerres/article/79/19/4994/638259/Mutant-IDH-Sensitizes-Gliomas-to-Endoplasmic
