Pinar Uysal-Onganer

Lecturer in Molecular Biology, University of Westminster

I have finished my PhD by completing my studies both at Centre for Hepatology at UCL and the Medical School of Marmara University in Turkey. My research experience involves a range of cell signalling mechanisms such as Wnt signalling, the functional and molecular aspects of cancer. I have worked at Imperial College London for 9 years as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow. I have studied on voltage-gated sodium channel (VGSC) expression in metastatic disease at Prof Djamgoz’s laboratory and was first to demonstrate functional upregulation of VGSCs in human small-cell lung cancer, in vitro and in vivo. Then I started collaboration with Baroness Greenfield and demonstrated that an acetylcholinesterase-derived peptide has significant effects on metastatic behaviour of human breast cancer cell lines. Then, I have joined Dr Kypta's lab Prostate Cancer Group at Oncology Dept, Imperial College London and since then have been working on Wnt signalling and prostate cancer.

I have been awarded a Certificate of Medical Biology Education and Learning (level achieved – Reader) from the Higher Education Authority of Turkey at 2009 and become a Fellow of HEA at 2014.

I have joined University of Westminster at 2015 and am involved in teaching on Advance Cancer Biology, Medical Genetics in Practice, Cell Signalling and Molecular Science and Diagnostics modules in both UG and PG levels. Prior to that I worked at University of Bedfordshire for 3 years as a Senior Lecturer of Cell and Molecular Biology. I am an honorary Lecturer at Imperial College London and teach annually the Cancer Biology Course (metastasis and tumour suppressor genes) there. I also give 'cancer stem cells lecture and Human Genome Project' lectures annually to University of Greenwich.

I have also been actively involved in fund-raising activities with charities such as the Cancer Research UK, the Prostate Cancer Research Fund (PCRF) and the Prostate Cancer Charity (PCC). I am an Athena Swan Coordinator of Biomedical Science Department at University of Westminster and run STEMM activities for local schools.