Dr Giulia Biffi joins Institute as new Group Leader

We are delighted to announce that Dr Giulia Biffi is joining the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute as a new Group Leader in January 2020.

Dr Biffi studied at the University of Pavia in Italy for her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees before moving to Prof Sir Balasubramanian’s Group at the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute for her PhD. Since then, she has been awarded an EMBO Postdoctoral Fellowship and a Human Frontier Science Program Fellowship to undertake research in Prof Tuveson’s Laboratory at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. In the Tuveson lab, she has contributed to the discovery of different classes of tumour-associated fibroblasts and done groundbreaking work on the interactions of these stromal cells with pancreatic cancer cells.

As a Group Leader, Giulia will continue her work on the tumour microenvironment in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC), exploring new ways to perturb tumour-stroma crosstalk. Her research will particularly focus on characterising cancer-associated fibroblasts and the design of combination therapies to target relevant signalling pathways in PDAC.

Over the next few years, she plans to build a team with complementary expertise in cancer biology, biochemistry and chemical biology to investigate tumour-stroma networks from a variety of perspectives.

Her ultimate goal is to leverage our multi-disciplinary environment to identify new targetable vulnerabilities in PDAC and improve patient outcome.