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Katy Andrews

Graduate Teaching Assistant and PhD Student

Profile

Biography

Katy gained a first-class BSc (Hons) in Human Biology from EHU in 2018, receiving an Academic Excellence Award in 2017, and a Royal Society of Biology Award for achieving the highest grade in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, across her 3-year degree programme.

Katy completed an internship at the Freie Universität in Berlin, Germany, where she worked on the development of in vitro artificial 3D skin models using stem cells. Katy later completed an internship in microbiology at EHU working on GEMM (Group for Extreme and Marine Microbiology) and EDEN (Exploration of the Diversity of Extremophiles in the North of England) projects that focused on various aspects of microbial diversity and ecology in hypersaline environments.

Returning to biomedical epigenetics for her undergraduate dissertation project titled ‘Identification of differential DNA methylation patterns controlling gene expression in keratinocytes from Autosomal Recessive Congenital Ichthyosis (ARCI) patients.’ The first preliminary data was accepted for presentation at the 2018 Annual meeting of the British Society for Investigative Dermatology 1.

Katy remained at EHU to complete her MRes degree titled ‘Establishment of a new plant-cell based protein replacement therapy for ichthyosis patients’. Ichthyosis is a rare and severe genetic disorder, causing abnormal development of the skin. There is no cure, and treatments are purely therapeutic. Katy’s PhD research aims to change this by developing a non-invasive, animal cruelty free, protein replacement therapy.

Research Interests

Establishment of a new plant-cell based protein replacement therapy for ichthyosis patients