Michelle Lowry awarded the Irish Cancer Society PhD student of 2017 gold medal
Congratulations to PhD student Michelle Lowry on being awarded the Irish Cancer Society PhD student of 2017 gold medal.
Michelle Lowry has recently started the final year of her PhD under the supervision of Prof. Lorraine O'Driscoll in the School of Pharmacy & Pharmaceutical Sciences [and based in Trinity Biomedical Sciences Institute].
Michelle's PhD is focussed on a particular type of breast cancer, known as HER2-overexpressing breast cancer. Her research is helping us to understand why cancer cells develop resistance to anti-cancer therapies and, in particular, to the new anti-cancer drug neratinib. This research, made possible by an Irish Cancer Society grant to Prof. O'Driscoll as part of Breast-Predict, is also finding ways to overcome this resistance.
So far Michelle's research has contributed to 3 peer-review research publications; a prize-winning presentation at the International Society for Extracellular Vesicles conference in Toronto, May 2017; multiple published abstracts and national oral and poster presentations; and multi-media public engagements via radio and in person.
Michelle was one of 3 shortlisted finalists selected by the Irish Cancer Society to progress to presenting her research to a public audience in the House of Lord, Bank of Ireland (last night).
From this, the judging panel -including a cancer patient, a leading cancer researcher, and communications experts- deemed Michelle to be the overall winner and gold medal recipient.