Athena Phoa

I received my PhD from the University of Sydney in Australia in 2020. During my PhD, my project looked at studying novel small molecule kinase inhibitors for the treatment of glioblastoma. I am now a post-doctoral fellow in the Collings Stevens Chronic Leukemia Research Laboratory based at the BC Cancer Research Institute under the mentorship of Dr Xiaoyan Jiang. The main problem with the current therapy for chronic myeloid leukemia is their inability to kill blood cancer stem cells that are responsible for drug resistance and cancer relapse. This project will study the effects of combining miR-185 restoration with BCR-ABL silencing using specific RNA sequences delivered using an optimized lipid nanoparticle formulation in order to effectively eradicate blood cancer stem cells.