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Chiara Recchi graduated cum laude in Italy with a Master in the laboratory of Cesare Montecucco at the University of Padova. She then moved to France at the Pasteur Institute in the group of Brigitte Gicquel, where she obtained her PhD in Microbiology for her work on the virulence factors of Mycobacterium tuberculosis.

Later, she extended her interest to cell biology and she trained as a postdoc in the laboratory of Philippe Chavrier at the Curie Institute in Paris. Here she became involved in the study of intracellular trafficking and how this controls the metastatic properties of cancer cells.

She thus continued working in this field when in 2007 she moved to London, where she became research associate at the Imperial College in Miguel Seabra’s group. Here she developed her own project combining her expertise in intracellular trafficking with the lab’s experience in Rab proteins. This led to one of the first descriptions of Rab27a as key to tumour progression.

She now leads the Tumour Suppressor Group at the Ovarian Cancer Action Research Centre, directed by Hani Gabra, at Imperial College London.

Her main focus is to understand how the tumour suppressor protein OPCML controls trafficking and signalling of Receptor Tyrosine Kinases in ovarian cancer.

Professor Gabra is Co-Founder, Board Member and Chief Scientific Officer at Papyrus Therapeutics Inc; he also hold the position of Consultant Medical Oncologist at Portsmouth Hospitals University NHS Trust and is Professor Emeritus in Medical Oncology, Imperial College London.

He has extensive experience of preclinical cancer biology and clinical drug development, having previously been Chief Medical Officer at BerGenBio,Oxford, UK and Vice President in Early Clinical Development at AstraZeneca in Cambridge, UK, concurrently holding the positions of Professor of Medical Oncology at Imperial College London and Honorary Consultant in Medical Oncology at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust (since 2003) and Adjunct Professor at the Centre for Cancer Biomarkers at University of Bergen. He was previously Head of Medical Oncology, Director of the Ovarian Cancer Action Research Centre and Head of Imperial College Cancer Clinical Trials Unit, as well as Chief of Service of the West London Gynaecological Cancer Centre at Imperial College London. Prior to that he was Cancer Research UK Clinical Scientist and Honorary Clinical Senior Lecturer/Consultant in Medical Oncology at the CRUK Medical Oncology Unit in the University of Edinburgh.

Prof Gabra is an internationally recognised leader in translational research and gynaecological oncology. His research interests include tumour suppressor genes that regulate receptor tyrosine kinase networks (including AXL), the molecular basis of clinical platinum resistance, and all phases of ovarian cancer clinical research. He is the author of more than 200 peer reviewed publications and patents, with over 15,000 citations associated with his publications.

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