Alison Banham

Alison Banham's academic qualifications include BA, MA and D.Phil. (PhD) degrees from the University of Oxford and Fellowship of the Royal College of Pathologists.  

Professor Banham is a founder member and Vice President of the European Network of Monoclonal Antibody Producing Laboratories. She is internationally recognised for her expertise in the production and characterisation of monoclonal antibodies and has written guidelines to promote effective antibody validation. She has also made key contributions to the design and delivery of EuroMabNet workshops that teach young scientists how to validate antibodies.  

Since 1995 Professor Banham's main research focus has been within the field of cancer, particularly aggressive B-cell malignancies, focussing initially on the identification and characterisation of novel diagnostic and prognostic biomarkers. These have included the FOXP family of forkhead transcription factors (FOXP1-4) and the cancer testis antigen PASD1. These de-regulated transcription factors have functional roles in tumour biology and strategies are being investigated to enable their future therapeutic targeting in diffuse large B-cell lymphoma and multiple myeloma.  

Professor Banham's team are also generating novel therapeutic antibodies. These include antibodies targeting the tumour vasculature, in particular the Notch ligand Jagged-1 and the adhesion G-protein coupled receptor ELTD1. She is also pursuing the development of TCR mimic antibodies which recognise peptides from intracellular tumour proteins that are presented on the cell surface by MHC class I molecules. This enables targeting of the intracellular proteome and antibodies to the p53 oncosuppressor are being further characterised.

ORCID

0000-0002-3197-273X