Dr Rebecca Graham

Rebecca’s research combines stem cell work in the lab and computational approaches to understand the changes that occur in brain cells early on in the progression of motor neuron disease (MND). She is also testing drugs and drug combinations in the lab and modelling them computationally to identify drugs that block or reverse these identified changes. The ultimate goal is to find new therapeutics and biomarkers to inform therapeutic strategies to treat MND.

Rebecca graduated from the University of St Andrews with a first-class integrated Masters degree in Biochemistry (MBiochem) in 2016. Since then she has gained 8 years experience working on drug discovery projects in both academia and the pharmaceutical industry across a wide range of diseases. She worked at AstraZeneca in their high-throughput screening group before moving to Edinburgh to complete her PhD with Professor Neil Carragher working on Drug Discovery for Oesophageal Cancer. In 2021 Rebecca was awarded an MRC Transition Fellowship and worked with Professor Stuart Forbes to identify drugs that promote liver regeneration. She then moved to studying neurodegenerative diseases in 2022 when she joined Professor Siddharthan Chandran and Dr Bhuvaneish Selvaraj to work on drug discovery in motor neuron disease and gained a Chief Scientist Office Fellowship in 2023.