Maximising the power of innovation and creativity to improve organisations, cities and welfare
The College welcomes Dr Cristian Granados as Postdoctoral Research Associate
Dr Dilrini de Silva and her team’s research tackles high unmet need in medicines development
Dr. Dilrini De Silva and team members Dr. Paulo Amaral (Milner Institute) and Dr. Javier Armisen (AstraZeneca) have won the OncoInnovation TGIO 2020 Entrepreneurial Challenge themed Use of Genomics to Transform the Cancer Patient Pathway. They proposed ‘A cell-based platform for high-throughput PGx variant identification and validation’ to tackle a high unmet need in medicines development which impressed the judges. Their ultimate goal is to address the current lack of ethnic genetic diversity in commercially available cell line products used for drug safety and efficacy testing, and in clinical trial participants which means there are limited pharmacogenomic insights for underrepresented populations to truly benefit from precision medicine. The team will receive business coaching from Start Codon and Illumina Accelerator Cambridge to support their translational plans.
Dilrini is a Borysiewicz Biomedical Sciences Fellow and Research Associate in Bioinformatics at Cancer Research UK, Cambridge Institute. She is also a recipient of a 2020 UKRI Innovation Scholar secondment award through which she will be operating at the intersection of Quantitative Biology (a data science department) and Protein Production teams within AstraZeneca.
Her interests are in biotech entrepreneurship, public health and translating genomic research to the clinic. In her former role at CRUK she developed computational methods for analysis and clinical translation of low-cost whole genome sequencing in high-grade serous ovarian cancer. Prior to joining CRUK she designed and performed large-scale computational analyses of pathogen DNA sequencing data for tracking transmission and antimicrobial resistance at the University of Oxford. She graduated with a Masters and PhD in Bioinformatics from Queen Mary, University of London and BSc in Biotechnology from Bangalore University, India.
In addition to research activities, she co-founded Theme Institute, a not-for-profit think tank in her home country Sri Lanka in 2016 and develops its training portfolio under the themes of Health, Education and Technology. She also serves on the board of the Association of Professional Sri Lankans in the UK (a UK registered charity) and develops its Cancer Relief Network.
