We are delighted to announce that Tim Somerville has been selected as the winner of the Institute’s Dexter Award for Young Scientists for 2015.  The prize recognises the most impressive scientific achievement of the year across the building by a student, post-doc or scientific officer.

The judging panel were highly impressed by Tim’s achievements during his PhD studies in the Leukaemia Biology laboratory and felt that he was a very worthy winner. Tim joined the group, led by Tim Somervaille, in 2011 and started a project following up a previous observation that FOXC1 transcripts are highly expressed in at least 20% of human Acute Myeloid Leukaemia cases. Tim subsequently discovered a completely novel oncogenic mechanism in AML, namely the tissue inappropriate de-repression of a mesenchymal transcription factor which leads to a differentiation block in myeloid lineage cells and lower survival in patients. This work was published in Cancer Cell in September 2015 with Tim as first author. He is also a co-author on four other papers produced by the group which is a highly impressive output from his time here.  Other success enjoyed by Tim during his PhD included winning an American Society of Hematology abstract achievement award and having his work selected for an oral presentation at both the 8th International PhD Student Cancer Conference and at The University of Manchester’s Postgraduate Summer Research Showcase. Continuing with his interest in transcriptional regulation of leukaemia, Tim has recently moved to the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory to take up an exciting post-doctoral position with Christopher Vakoc, a scientist internationally recognised for his ground-breaking discoveries in the areas of epigenetics and cancer biology.

We extend our congratulations to Tim on this well-deserved award and wish him all the best in his future research endeavours.