The Campbell Lab
The aim of the Campbell lab is the characterisation of chemokines and chemokine receptor expression in cells clinically to better advise their use applications such as cell therapy and organ transplantation.
Postdocs
Dr. Kay Hewit
About Kay
I am a research scientist within the Advanced Therapeutics department of the Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service (SNBTS) and I work in collaboration with the CRG. My primary project is concerned with increasing our understanding of mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs), and in particular, their potential to be used in cell therapy due to their immunomodulatory and anti-inflammatory properties. I am using CRISPR technology on MSCs in order to knock out key genes of interest, including chemokines and their receptors, in order to understand their function in these cells. My role also involves the development and optimization of CRISPR as a core technique to be used frequently within the CRG.
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Dr Alan Hayes
About Alan
My research focuses on using chemokines to improve natural killer (NK) cells in an anti-cancer therapy. By using the inflammatory chemokine receptor CCR2, I use flow cytometry to isolate NK cells that are primed to migrate into tumours and explore the difference between CCR2+ and CCR2- NK cells. I am also involved in public engagement activities and helped to develop our “robocells” activity.
Outside the lab I enjoy walking, baking and playing video games and you will likely find me on my Xbox or climbing a mountain at the weekend.
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Ph.D. Students
Nerea Cuesta Gomez
About Nerea
My work is focused on understanding the effect tissue of origin has in the attraction of leukocytes by mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs) and the potential immunomodulatory and anti - inflammatory ability of MSCs according to the cells they recruit. MSCs isolated from the bone marrow, adipose tissue and islets of Langerhans have a different pattern of chemokine secretion, leading to a differential recruitment of leukocytes in the air pouch model. The aim of my project is to understand the role of differential chemokine secretion by MSCs isolated from different tissues within a clinical setting.
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Rachel Cooper
About Rachel
I am a research scientist at SNBTS Advanced Therapeutics working for the past few years on developing an Epstein-Barr virus-specific T cell therapy for treatment of EBV-induced post-transplant lymphoma. I’m now doing a part-time PhD trying to understand how these cells migrate and infiltrate tumours once infused into the patient, and ultimately if the T cell chemokine receptor expression could be modified to target towards EBV-induced solid tumours in particular sites.
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