Organizing Committee Member
Nik Georgopoulos
Associate Professor
University of Huddersfield
United Kingdom
Biography
Nik received his BSc (Biochemistry & Genetics) and his PhD at the University of Leeds. This was followed by a post-doctoral fellowship at the Cancer Research UK Centre (St James’ Hospital, Leeds) and an EPSRC-funded fellowship in the Jack Birch Unit of Molecular Carcinogenesis (University of York). Following that, he moved to the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Huddersfield where he is currently a Reader (Associate Professor) in Cell Biology.
Research Area
Nik’s research focuses on understanding how the process of epithelial cancer development influences proliferation/growth, differentiation and particularly cell responses to death signals triggered by members of the TNF Receptor (TNFR) family of proteins. The aim is to use such knowledge to design novel, tumour-specific anticancer therapies. Currently he is developing a novel platform of cancer therapeutics based on the TNFR family (ThanatoCure™). His skin-related research involves using biological models to explore, at the cellular and molecular level, the underlying mechanisms of defective wound healing and chemotherapy-induced alopecia. This will permit the improvement of existing medical devices and design of novel technologies to provide improved therapeutic intervention strategies. Nik has a major industrial collaboration on skin-related research with Paxman (http://paxman-coolers.com).