Dr Sophia Karagiannis

Organisation

King’s College London

Job title

Senior Lecturer in Translational Cancer Immunology, Head of Cancer Antibody Discovery and Immunotherapy

Biography

Dr. Sophia Karagiannis is a Senior Lecturer in translational cancer immunology at King’s College London. She received BA and MS degrees at Rutgers University, USA, under scholarship and teaching assistantship awards, and a PhD at King’s College London in Biochemistry under SERC and SmithKline Beecham-funded scholarships (1995). She subsequently developed immunotherapeutic strategies for tissue cancers and inflammatory diseases in academic and biotechnology environments in London and in Cambridge as a Scientific Investigator. She was appointed as NIHR/BRC Senior Research Fellow in 2007 and as Head of Cancer Antibody Discovery and Immunotherapy in 2012 at King’s College London. Her cancer antibody discovery group specialises in dissecting B cell and antibody immune responses and in designing therapeutic monoclonal antibodies and derivatives with main focus on skin, ovarian, breast and colorectal carcinomas. Her group are actively engaged towards a Phase I clinical trial, where a first-in-class therapeutic antibody will be tested in patients with cancer. Dr Karagiannis and her team are also conducting research to understand how cancer cells can interfere with our body’s ability to launch immune cells against cancer and how this knowledge can inform the design of novel antibodies with improved ability to destroy tumours.