My name is Dr Elizabeth Marsh and I am a senior lecturer in Molecular and Cellular Biology at the University of Derby. My research interests are in Human Papillomavirus, the virus that we know causes Cervical Cancer.
So, whilst we know that Human Papillomavirus causes Cervical Cancer and we have the vaccination program coming in and a very efficient screening program for Cervical Cancer, we now know that HPV (Human Papillomavirus) causes Oropharyngeal Cancer, predominantly in men.
However, we don't know how that virus causes Oropharyngeal Cancer so that is the background to this project which we hope will begin to unpick how the virus causes head and neck cancer.
This is a one-year MPhil project, it's a masters in Philosophy, which is effectively a research project that lasts about a year.
The student will generate all of the original data and then write up the thesis and that will be examined.
Histologix, based at Nottingham Biocity, is an independent lab that works on Immunohistochemistry, Digital Pathology and Image Analysis.
I have a very strong molecular background and of course, they are very image based looking at tissues specifically, and so we are a really nice combination actually, and we can offer them two alternative approaches to answer the same research question.
So, I look at things very much on a DNA/RNA level and they are looking at something called Immunofluorescence so where we actually look at the protein that we are interested in and where it is in the cell and how much of it is being expressed and so forth.
So, together those two areas of expertise, bring a new approach, and a very complementary approach, to answering the question as to how HPV causes head and neck cancer.
Ultimately, we hope that the end point of this project will be an understanding of biomarkers — so these are markers of disease caused by the virus in the region of the head and neck that the virus infects, so that's the tonsil — and whether these are prognostic for disease, whether they can be used to inform how the disease is going to progress in an individual.
Perhaps we could then identify those that will respond better to a certain treatment or we might even be able to diagnose it earlier — that sort of thing.
So, bringing all of that information together from both the Immunohistochemical approach that we've got based at Histologix and with the molecular boost approach based here at the University of Derby, will hopefully begin to answer those questions for us.
So, from my perspective, working with an industry partner has been really quite illuminating as I have no experience of working with industry through my career; I've been very HE focused in my research. So, things like these incredible pieces of equipment that they have, and the industrial scale at which they operate and the throughput at which they undertake their own research and work, has been really interesting.
Being able to contribute a much more specific and a very narrow research question but answering it at that sort of scale has been really interesting.
We were approached by the University to pair with Histologix through the European Regional Development Fund and Histologix had some fundamental questions that they would like to be answered for their own development of their company and the services that they offer to their clients, whereas we had some very significant and specific research questions that we wanted to be answered.
The conversations developed and it very clearly became very quickly apparent that we were going to be a really good match to complement each other, and for their novel approach to answer some of my questions and for our research to answer some of their development as well.