Skip Navigation

Konstantinos (Kostas) Kafetzis

Graduate Teaching Assistant and PhD Student

Profile

Biography

Kostas joined the Biology Department in October 2019 as a Research Assistant in the group of Dr Aristides Tagalakis. In January 2021 he joined the EHU’s PhD and Graduate Teaching Assistant (GTA) Programme.

Prior to this, in 2013, Kostas graduated, on top of his class, from the Democritus University of Thrace (DUTH), in Greece, with a BSc (Hons) in Molecular Biology and Genetics. During his 4-year degree, Kostas studied the effects of Hepatoma Upregulated Protein (HURP) knockdown in the different stages of skin cancer, using a mouse skin carcinogenesis model.

After his mandatory military service, Kostas joined University College London (UCL) and graduated in 2015 with an MSc in Cell and Gene Therapy. As part of his degree, Kostas researched modified mRNAs as an alternative gene therapy treatment strategy for Cystic Fibrosis.

From 2015 onwards, Kostas focused on teaching and tutoring A Level students in Greece until 2018, when he joined the pharmaceutical industry as a Quality Control Analyst, before he decided to return to academia.

Kostas’ PhD project is focused on developing novel lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) for the delivery of microRNA-29b in conjunctival fibroblasts and studying its effects as a therapeutic agent to prevent post-operative fibrosis after glaucoma filtration surgery.

Research Interests

  • miR-29b as a target for a novel, LNP-based, therapeutic approach to prevent postoperative fibrosis in the eye after glaucoma surgery.