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Catrin Pritchard

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Catrin Pritchard is a British researcher who is professor of cancer biochemistry and deputy director of the Leicester Cancer Research Centre at the University of Leicester.[1] She was director of the Leicester CRUK Centre from 2014–2017 and head of department of cancer studies at the University of Leicester from 2014–2018. Her research focuses on animal and human preclinical models for cancer.[2]

Education

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Pritchard received her MA in biochemistry from Jesus College, Oxford University, in 1983.[2] In 1987 she finished her PhD at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund on mapping of the male determining gene on the human Y chromosome under the supervision of Peter Goodfellow.[3] Pritchard undertook postdoctoral research at the University of California, San Francisco (1987–1991) and at the DNAX Research Institute, California (1992–1995). At DNAX she worked on intracellular signalling through RAF kinases, investigating their mechanisms of control of the MAPK pathway in normal and cancer cells.[4]

Career and research

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Pritchard moved to the University of Leicester where she held a Royal Society University Research Fellow[5] from 1995–2003. She began to use genetic mouse models to investigate the role of the RAF family of protein kinases in control of intracellular signalling pathways involved in mammalian development.[6] She developed conditional knockin mouse models for oncogenic forms of BRAF detected in human cancer and used these models to understand mechanisms of oncogene-driven cancer initiation and progression. The majority of this work was supported by Cancer Research UK programme funding.[2] Part of this research involved receptors that were linked to male fertility.[7]

In 2009, Pritchard was appointed chair of cancer biochemistry at the University of Leicester and, in 2010, she was awarded a Royal Society-Wolfson merit award, which she held until 2015. In 2017, she began development of a new patient-derived explant model system, which is being applied to the preclinical testing of anti-cancer drugs and in the development of pharmacodynamic biomarkers.[8]

Awards and honours

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  • Royal Society University Research Fellowship: 1995–2003[2]
  • Royal Society-Wolfson merit award holder: 2010–2015[citation needed]

References

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  1. ^ "Leicester's Hospitals secures funding for new Cancer Research UK Centre". Leicester Hospitals NHS Trust. Retrieved 9 February 2019.
  2. ^ a b c d "Catrin Pritchard — University of Leicester". www2.le.ac.uk. Retrieved 8 February 2019.
  3. ^ Pritchard, Catrin A.; Goodfellow, Paul J.; Goodfellow, Peter N. (July 1987). "Mapping the limits of the human pseudoautosomal region and a candidate sequence for the male-determining gene". Nature. 328 (6127): 273–275. Bibcode:1987Natur.328..273P. doi:10.1038/328273a0. ISSN 1476-4687. PMID 2885758.
  4. ^ Pritchard, C A; Samuels, M L; Bosch, E; McMahon, M (November 1995). "Conditionally oncogenic forms of the A-Raf and B-Raf protein kinases display different biological and biochemical properties in NIH 3T3 cells". Molecular and Cellular Biology. 15 (11): 6430–6442. doi:10.1128/mcb.15.11.6430. ISSN 0270-7306. PMC 230894. PMID 7565795.
  5. ^ "Catrin Pritchard | Royal Society". royalsociety.org. Retrieved 8 February 2019.
  6. ^ Pritchard, Catrin; Marais, Richard; Brown, Jane; Sun, Xiao-Ming; Giblett, Susan; Iwobi, Mabel; Mercer, Kathryn; Chiloeches, Antonio; Luckett, Jeni (17 April 2001). "MEK kinase activity is not necessary for Raf‐1 function". The EMBO Journal. 20 (8): 1940–1951. doi:10.1093/emboj/20.8.1940. ISSN 0261-4189. PMC 125235. PMID 11296227.
  7. ^ "Gene Can Make a Deferens to Men". The Sydney Morning Herald. 8 January 2000. p. 23. Retrieved 11 February 2019 – via Newspapers.com.
  8. ^ Pringle, James Howard; MacFarlane, Marion; Pritchard, Catrin; Moore, David; Quesne, John Le; Reid, Helen; Pugh, John; Sharp, Barry; Liao, Wen-Jing (15 April 2017). "Ex Vivo Explant Cultures of Non–Small Cell Lung Carcinoma Enable Evaluation of Primary Tumor Responses to Anticancer Therapy". Cancer Research. 77 (8): 2029–2039. doi:10.1158/0008-5472.CAN-16-1121. ISSN 0008-5472. PMID 28202521.