Deborah Gill

Deborah Gill is based in the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford where she is Professor of Gene Medicine, Co-Director of the Gene Medicine Research Group and Head of the Nuffield Division of Clinical Laboratory Sciences within the Radcliffe Department of Medicine at the University of Oxford.

Deborah completed her PhD in molecular microbiology at the University of Warwick, studying cell division proteins in E.coli, during which she discovered the  defining bacterial member of the ABC (ATP-Binding Cassette) superfamily of proteins. Deborah then moved to the University of Oxford, to undertake post-doctoral research at the Weatherall Institute for Molecular Medicine, investigating human ABC proteins including the Multi-Drug Resistance p-glycoprotein and CFTR, the protein responsible for Cystic Fibrosis (CF). Deborah's research then began to focus on the potential of gene therapy for genetic diseases, developing a potential treatment for Cystic Fibrosis lung disease, and resulting in multiple clinical trials demonstrating proof of principle for CF gene therapy.

As a founding member of the UK Respiratory Gene Therapy Consortium, Deborah's research team has focused on the development of new viral and non-viral vectors for treatment of lung diseases and for the translation of new lung gene therapies to the clinic. A current focus is targeting rare lung diseases such as Surfactant Protein Deficiency, which causes severe respiratory distress in babies. These include the lethal deficiencies in surfactant protein B and ABCA3 proteins.