Marcela B. Mansur

Graduated in Biomedicine (2005) at Universidade Federal do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (UNIRIO), MSc (2008) and PhD (2011) degrees in Oncology both at Instituto Nacional de Câncer (INCA), Post-doctoral training: INCA, Rio de Janeiro - Brazil (2011-2012) & The Institute of Cancer Research (ICR), London - UK in Professor Sir Mel Greaves' team (2012-2015). I was a Visiting Young Investigator in the Research Centre, INCA (2015-2021), before joining the Childhood Leukaemia Research Group, Department of Paediatrics, University of Oxford as a Leukaemia UK John Goldman Research Fellow.

My research experience to date has focused on genomic profiling of infant and childhood T-ALL. After my PhD, I successfully applied for an EHA Partner Fellowship which allowed me to train in Prof Greaves’ team. This was a unique and very fruitful experience, and as part of the EHA award, I returned to Brazil for some years to share the expertise acquired and mentor other younger researchers.

Now, back in the UK as a John Goldman Research Fellow in the Childhood Leukaemia Research Group, I aim to gain independence by performing an innovative project focused on unravelling the cell-of-origin in MLL-AF4⁺ acute lymphoblastic leukaemia at a single-cell level. This project will systematically characterise MLL-AF4⁺ ALL at a single-cell level in infants, children and adults using the same platforms (TARGET-seq, i.e. genotyping and transcriptome analysis of single-cells, in collaboration with Prof Adam Mead). This will answer a long-held question in the field about the cell-of-origin of MLL-r ALL and whether the leukaemia initiating translocation can be detected in non-B lymphoid, upstream haematopoietic stem and progenitor cells. This research project will provide fundamental insight into ALL pathogenesis and may pinpoint key vulnerabilities of treatment-resistant ALL, which can be exploited for targeted drug discovery and/or immunotherapeutic approaches.