Prof Steven Pollard

Steve was an undergraduate in Biochemistry at the University of Bath, which included a 6-month placement at St Jude Children’s Research Hospital (Memphis, USA). This stimulated his interest in molecular and cellular mechanisms that control normal development, stem cells, and cancer. His PhD studies in zebrafish genetics were carried out at the MRC National Institute for Medical Research (NIMR) in the division of Developmental Biology (Lab of Dr Derek Stemple). From there he moved his research into mammalian stem cell biology, working as a postdoctoral scientist with Prof Austin Smith FRS, at the University of Edinburgh, and latterly at the University of Cambridge. Here, as a Wellcome Beit Fellow he focused on neural stem cells and glioblastoma and had a fruitful collaboration with Prof Peter Dirks (Sick Kids, Toronto) to demonstrate improved methods for development of patient-derived GBM models.
He established his own independent laboratory in 2010 at the new UCL Cancer Institute, before moving in 2013 to the MRC Centre for Regenerative Medicine and Edinburgh Cancer Research Centre (Edinburgh). He holds the prestigious Cancer Research UK Senior Fellowship, and in 2017 was awarded the Chair of Stem Cell and Cancer Biology.
His laboratory continues to study the molecular and cellular mechanisms that regulate neural stem self-renewal and differentiation, and how these operate in the context of human brain tumours. New technologies emerging from stem cell biology, genome editing and mammalian synthetic biology have opened up tremendous new opportunities to tackle glioblastoma – particularly for new target discovery and drug screening. He is co-leading the new Edinburgh-UCL Glioma Cellular Genetics Resource and science lead for the CRUK Brain Cancer Centre of Excellence. He serves on the Cancer Research UK Science Committee and the Worldwide Cancer Research Grants panel.