Hi, I’m Grace and I am a first year PhD student at the University of Manchester (UK) funded by NF2 BioSolutions.
Before setting my sights on this PhD, I had not heard of Neurofibromatosis Type 2 but it has opened my eyes to a world of fantastically strong, positive people who want to make a difference. I want to add to this awesome community through this blog and share some info on my research as a PhD student.
I thought I might start by introducing my project where I am looking into the inflammation and cells that reside in meningiomas. As I am just two months into my PhD, my main focus right now is to understand what work has previously been done in meningioma research to gain a deeper understanding of the neuroinflammation in these tumours.
After understanding gaps in the prior work, I will to look into what cells or disruptions in the meningiomas we might be able to target with drugs that have already been verified to treat other diseases. The aim is to do this in the lab with cell lines that we can grow in a dish and to combine this with the detailed microscopy and imaging of the cells in meningioma samples kindly donated after surgery. This will hopefully result in discoveries that may lead to new, targeted therapeutics for those with NF2.
As my PhD is three years long, I hope you will enjoy following my journey on here where I plan to post updates, news and ideas. If you wish to contact me about anything or create a blog post yourself, you can drop me an email at grace@nf2biosolutions.org
Thanks for reading!
– Grace Gregory
This blog has been created following an NF2 BioSolutions UK coffee morning chat as a way to share stories, ideas, positivity and even sprinkle in some science. Everyone is welcome here and warmly encouraged to join us in contributing to our community through this blog. If you would like to add anything (anything at all!) then please contact myself, Grace Gregory, at grace@nf2biosolutions.org and we can pop it up on our blog. Watch this space and please join in helping us all connect and share with one another!