The
Cancer
Macro
environment
Lab
is located at the Francis Crick Institute
in central London.
About
the Group Leader
Jose earned his PhD at the Spanish National Cardiovascular Research Centre (CNIC) in Madrid, working on circadian control of innate immunity under homeostatic and inflammatory conditions (with a focus on cardiovascular disease) in the laboratory of Andres Hidalgo.
He was then a Cancer Research Institute (CRI) Irvington postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Mikala Egeblad at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York, where he studied the role of neutrophils and NETs in acute lung injury and cancer progression.
He later became a research associate at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, where he studied the role of neutrophils and vascular inflammation in cancer progression. In 2024, he became a Crick/BHF Group Leader at the Francis Crick Institute with support from the British Heart Foundation.
Lab
members
Saira Ambreen
Postdoctoral fellow
Saira completed her PhD at Universität Leipzig, Germany, where her research focused on cardiovascular diseases, specifically diabetes-induced atherosclerosis. She investigated the role of macrophages in plaque formation and explored the impact of anticoagulants in mitigating this process.
Currently, Saira is a postdoctoral researcher in the Adrover lab, where she is working on the role of neutrophils in both cancer and cardiovascular diseases.
Afshan McCarthy
Principal laboratory research scientist
Nathan Costa Hunter
Undergraduate student
Nathan is an undergraduate student at the University of Sheffield, currently on a placement year in the Adrover lab. His project focuses on investigating how the phenotypes and functional properties of neutrophils change as organisms age. As ageing comes with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease and cancer, his work aims to build on the lab’s ongoing research and potentially find a connection between established disease-associated neutrophil populations and ageing.
Katherine Stafford
MD-PhD candidate
Katherine is a doctoral clinical fellow and PhD candidate with an interest in haematology and oncology. She earned her MBBS from Imperial College London and completed a Master of Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where her capstone focused on using epidemiologic data to evaluate the risk of persistent opioid use in lymphoma patients. After completing her internal medicine residency at Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, MA, she joined the faculty at the University of Colorado Denver, practicing as a hospitalist at the safety-net hospital, Denver Health. Her research at UC Denver investigated the role of altitude in exacerbating sickle-cell trait associated clinical outcomes. As a PhD student in the Adrover lab, she is focusing on the role of neutrophils in cancer, utilizing both patient samples and preclinical models to investigate their function in cancer progression.
Lucía Domínguez Esteban
PhD student
Lucía obtained her BSc in Biochemistry and MSc on Molecular Biomedicine from the Autonoma University of Madrid. She developed a great interest in the link between cancer and immunology during her bachelor’s and master’s thesis, focused on characterizing novel anti-cancer drugs (Institute of Biomedical Research “Sols-Morreale”, IIBm) and on the physiological roles of neutrophils (Spanish National Cardiovascular Research Centre, CNIC), respectively. After working on the design of recombinant T cell receptors at the Centre for Molecular Biology “Severo Ochoa” (CBMSO), she has joined the lab to carry out her PhD, aiming to target tumor necrosis to reduce metastatic spread and improve therapeutic outcome for cancer patients.
Former lab
members
Sarah Chengo
Undergraduate student
Sarah is an undergraduate student at King’s College London where she is studying BSc Biomedical Science. Currently, Sarah is a summer placement student in the Adrover lab, where she is studying neutrophils and NETs in cancer specimens by performing tissue clearing and IF staining, as well as using the HoxB8 neutrophil system to target NET formation.
Saira Ambreen
Postdoctoral fellow
Saira completed her PhD at Universität Leipzig, Germany, where her research focused on cardiovascular diseases, specifically diabetes-induced atherosclerosis. She investigated the role of macrophages in plaque formation and explored the impact of anticoagulants in mitigating this process.
Currently, Saira is a postdoctoral researcher in the Adrover lab, where she is working on the role of neutrophils in both cancer and cardiovascular diseases.
Afshan McCarthy
Principal laboratory research scientist
Nathan Costa Hunter
Undergraduate student
Nathan is an undergraduate student at the University of Sheffield, currently on a placement year in the Adrover lab. His project focuses on investigating how the phenotypes and functional properties of neutrophils change as organisms age. As ageing comes with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease and cancer, his work aims to build on the lab’s ongoing research and potentially find a connection between established disease-associated neutrophil populations and ageing.
Katherine Stafford
MD-PhD candidate
Katherine is a doctoral clinical fellow and PhD candidate with an interest in haematology and oncology. She earned her MBBS from Imperial College London and completed a Master of Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where her capstone focused on using epidemiologic data to evaluate the risk of persistent opioid use in lymphoma patients. After completing her internal medicine residency at Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, MA, she joined the faculty at the University of Colorado Denver, practicing as a hospitalist at the safety-net hospital, Denver Health. Her research at UC Denver investigated the role of altitude in exacerbating sickle-cell trait associated clinical outcomes. As a PhD student in the Adrover lab, she is focusing on the role of neutrophils in cancer, utilizing both patient samples and preclinical models to investigate their function in cancer progression.
Lucía Domínguez
PhD student
Lucía obtained her BSc in Biochemistry and MSc on Molecular Biomedicine from the Autonoma University of Madrid. She developed a great interest in the link between cancer and immunology during her bachelor’s and master’s thesis, focused on characterizing novel anti-cancer drugs (Institute of Biomedical Research “Sols-Morreale”, IIBm) and on the physiological roles of neutrophils (Spanish National Cardiovascular Research Centre, CNIC), respectively. After working on the design of recombinant T cell receptors at the Centre for Molecular Biology “Severo Ochoa” (CBMSO), she has joined the lab to carry out her PhD, aiming to target tumor necrosis to reduce metastatic spread and improve therapeutic outcome for cancer patients.
Former lab
members
Sarah Chengo
Undergraduate student
Sarah is an undergraduate student at King’s College London where she is studying BSc Biomedical Science. Currently, Sarah is a summer placement student in the Adrover lab, where she is studying neutrophils and NETs in cancer specimens by performing tissue clearing and IF staining, as well as using the HoxB8 neutrophil system to target NET formation.