Laura Marie Machesky FRSE FMedSci (born 13 August 1965) is a British-American cancer research scientist. She is the Sir William Dunn Professor of Biochemistry in the Department of Biochemistry, University of Cambridge, and the current president of the British Society for Cell Biology.
Machesky was born on 13 August 1965 in Dearborn, Michigan, United States. She studied at Alma College, graduating with a Bachelor of Science (BSc) degree in 1987, and then at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine where she completed her Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) degree in 1993. [1]
Machesky was a postdoc at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB) from 1995 to 1997 and then an MRC Career Development Fellow, MRC Senior Research Fellow and Professor of Cell Biology at the School of Biosciences, University of Birmingham from 1998 to 2007. [2] [3] [4] She was a Medical Research Council (MRC) senior research fellow and Professor of Cell Biology at the Beatson Institute for Cancer Research in Glasgow from 2007 to 2022, and director of the Institute of Cancer Sciences at the University of Glasgow from 2020 to 2022. She moved to Cambridge University in 2022 as Sir William Dunn Professor of Biochemistry. [1]
Machesky's research group specialises in cancer cell migration, invasion, metastasis and the energetics of cell biology. She discovered the 7-subunit Arp2/3 complex and showed that this was a major regulator of actin dynamics and cell migration. According to the Academy of Medical Sciences, this work "changed the way the field understood fundamental principles of signalling to actin dynamics and impacted on biomedical problems such as host-pathogen interactions, endocytic trafficking, phagocytosis and cancer cell invasion". [4]
Machesky was elected as a Member of the European Molecular Biology Organisation in 2012, [5] a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2014, [3] and a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2016. [4] Her husband Robert Insall is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and a professor at the University of Glasgow. [6]
The Medical Research Council (MRC) is responsible for co-coordinating and funding medical research in the United Kingdom. It is part of United Kingdom Research and Innovation (UKRI), which came into operation 1 April 2018, and brings together the UK's seven research councils, Innovate UK and Research England. UK Research and Innovation is answerable to, although politically independent from, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.
Richard Henderson is a British molecular biologist and biophysicist and pioneer in the field of electron microscopy of biological molecules. Henderson shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2017 with Jacques Dubochet and Joachim Frank. "Thanks to his work, we can look at individual atoms of living nature, thanks to cryo-electron microscopes we can see details without destroying samples, and for this he won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry."
Sir John Stewart Savill, FRS, FMedSci is the Chief Executive of the Medical Research Council (MRC) in the UK and the Head of the College of Medicine and Veterinary Medicine and a Vice Principal of the University of Edinburgh.
Frank S. Walsh PhD, DSc (Hon.) FMedSci, FKC, corrFRSE is a British-born neuroscientist. He is best known for his work on the understanding of the role of cell adhesion molecules in the development and regeneration of the nervous system. He is the author of over 250 publications in peer-reviewed journals.
Veronica van Heyningen is an English geneticist who specialises in the etiology of anophthalmia as an honorary professor at University College London (UCL). She previously served as head of medical genetics at the MRC Human Genetics Unit in Edinburgh and the president of The Genetics Society. In 2014 she became president of the Galton Institute. As of 2019 she chairs the diversity committee of the Royal Society, previously chaired by Uta Frith.
Fiona Watt, is a British scientist who is internationally known for her contributions to the field of stem cell biology. In the 1980s, when the field was in its infancy, she highlighted key characteristics of stem cells and their environment that laid the foundation for much present day research.
Sir Tony Kouzarides, FMedSci, FRS is a senior group leader Gurdon Institute, a founding non-executive director of Abcam and a Professor of Cancer Biology at the University of Cambridge.
Doreen Ann Cantrell is a British scientist and Professor of Cellular Immunology at the School of Life Sciences, University of Dundee. She researches the development and activation T lymphocytes, which are key to the understanding the immune response.
Jane Clarke is a British biochemist and academic. Since October 2017, she has served as President of Wolfson College, Cambridge. She is also Professor of Molecular Biophysics, a Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Cambridge. She was previously a Fellow of Trinity Hall, Cambridge. In 2023, she was elected to the National Academy of Sciences.
Wendy Anne Bickmore is a British genome biologist known for her research on the organisation of genomic material in cells.
William Charles Earnshaw is an American biologist who is Professor of Chromosome Dynamics at the University of Edinburgh, where he has been a Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellow since 1996.
Dame Moira Katherine Brigid Whyte is a Scottish physician and medical researcher who is the Sir John Crofton Professor of Respiratory Medicine at the University of Edinburgh. She was the Director the Medical Research Council Centre for Inflammation Research and was Vice-Principal and Head of the College of Medicine and Veterinary Medicine at the University of Edinburgh. Whyte is also a trustee of Cancer Research UK.
Anne Jacqueline Ridley is a British biologist who is professor of Cell Biology and Head of School for Cellular and Molecular Medicine at the University of Bristol. She was previously a professor at King's College London.
Philippa Saunders, FRSE is Chair of Reproductive Steroids and Director of Postgraduate Research for the College of Medicine and Veterinary Medicine, University of Edinburgh, and Registrar of the Academy of Medical Sciences. Her research explores the mechanisms behind how sex steroids impact on repair, regeneration and cell replication throughout the body.
Margaret Frame is a British biologist. She is the Professor of Cancer Biology and Science Director of Cancer Research Centre at the University of Edinburgh. She is also Director of MRC Institute of Genetics & Molecular Medicine. She has made seminal contributions to understanding mechanisms of cell adhesion and motility. She previously served as deputy-director of the Beatson Institute in Glasgow.
Sir Richard Henry Treisman is a British scientist specialising in the molecular biology of cancer. Treisman is a director of research at the Francis Crick Institute in London.
Helen Walden is an English structural biologist who received the Colworth medal from the Biochemical Society in 2015. She was awarded European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) membership in 2022. She is a Professor of Structural Biology at the University of Glasgow and has made significant contributions to the Ubiquitination field.
Victoria Haigh Cowling FRSE is an English biologist who received the Women in Cell Biology Early Career Medal from the British Society for Cell Biology in 2014. Cowling is Professor of Biology, Lister Institute Fellow, MRC Senior Fellow and Deputy Head of The Centre for Gene Regulation and Expression at the University of Dundee.
Robert Insall is the professor of computational cell biology at University College London and the University of Glasgow. His work focuses on how eukaryotic cells move, and how they choose the direction in which they move. He is known for demonstrating that cells can spread in the body and find their way through mazes by creating gradients of chemoattractants.
Elizabeth Patton, Ph.D FRSE is professor of chemical genetics and group leader of Medical Research Council Institute for Genetics and Molecular Medicine (IGMM) Human Genetics Unit in Edinburgh, Personal Chair of Melanoma Genetics and Drug Discovery for a disease which kills 20,000 Europeans a year, and accounts for 80% of all skin cancer deaths. Her research into the genetic models and drug interactions testing, sharing international findings, is mainly using zebrafish in conjunction with the Edinburgh Cancer Research Centre. She holds a number of academic leadership roles in UK, Europe and international scientific bodies.