Conrado Guerrero Quiles is a junior postdoctoral researcher at the University of Manchester. He works at the Translational Radiobiology Group under the supervision of Prof Ananya Choudhury. The group focuses on mechanisms driving radiotherapy resistance, such as hypoxia, aiming to develop novel biomarkers and therapeutic targets to overcome them.
Conrado's research interest includes the changes induced by hypoxia in the extracellular matrix (ECM). Currently, there is no biomarkers in the clinic to identify patients with intratumoral hypoxia, which induces radiotherapy resistance. Hypoxia promotes ECM remodelling in a process that releases small soluble proteins which could potentially be used as biomarkers to identify patients with intratumoral hypoxia. In his project, Conrado characterised 350 RNAs and proteins with significantly affected by hypoxia in vitro, using the Whitley H35 Hypoxystation. Five of the candidates identified in vitro were validated using clinical samples and the group is pursuing further validation for their use as hypoxia biomarkers. The Whitley H35 Hypoxystation was an integral part of the project and key in the identification of the biomarker candidates.
The data generated during this project presented was presented in the European Association for Cancer Research (EACR) 2023 congress in Torino. The congress was an amazing opportunity to showcase the data, and received a lot of interest from peers and colleagues working in cancer research.
We wish Conrado all the best with his research and look forward to seeing future results. If you use a Whitley Workstation in your work and are interested in presenting at an upcoming conference head over to the DWS Travel Grant webpage for more information.