Profile

Hi! I’m Jenny. I’m 29 years old and will be 30 soon but that sounds really old! I did my undergraduate degree in biology at Manchester (with a year working in Austria) then my PhD in cell biology in Bristol. I finished my PhD 3 years ago and moved to Nottingham to try to set up my own research but then I had the chance to set up a new drugs company with my boss and that was much more exciting! I just bought a house and a small boat and I do gymnastics and sailing most weeks. Next year I’m taking part in a round the world yacht race from Brazil to South Africa!

Our chemist in Australia sends us new chemicals and our job is to work out which ones could be made into drugs (and how!) for people with diseases that are caused by too much blood vessel growth. This includes the most common types of blindness (age-related macular degeneration and diabetic macular oedema, wAMD and DME!) and most cancers. We really need to make new drugs that are less expensive, work better and have less unwanted effects on people. We discovered a way to do this by blocking a protein that changes the balance of another protein called VEGF that is either harmful or protective. When we use our drugs there is more protective VEGF and less disease.

In a typical day I do experiments in the lab to test new chemicals to see which ones work best and I try to understand the results. We grow cells in the lab that were donated to science 30 years ago. I also have to make sure that the rest of the team are ok and that my boss has the results and reports or presentations he needs. I have meetings with my team to talk about experiments and results and on a Friday I have a meeting with the rest of the company and the chemist to tell them what results we’ve got that week and what it means.