Biography

Prof Brunton gained her BSc Hons (First class) in Pharmacology from the University of Aberdeen. After being awarded her PhD in 1990 she moved to the University of Glasgow with Prof Paul Workman to work on development of EGF receptor tyrosine kinase inhibitors. She then moved to the Beatson Institute for Cancer Research to work with Prof Margaret Frame on the role of the non-receptor tyrosine kinases Src and FAK in tumour progression. She was involved in both the preclinical and clinical development of FAK and Src inhibitors, and continues to work on the development of these and other targeted agents since taking up her position as head of the Cancer Therapeutics group at the Edinburgh Cancer Research UK Centre at the University of Edinburgh in 2007. She was appointed as chair of Cancer Therapeutics at the University of Edinburgh in 2013. Her research focuses on understanding the role of adhesion complexes in tumour progression through interaction with the tumour microevironment. She is also involved in development of more appropriate preclinical models combined with innovative imaging to drive forward new approaches in drug development. This includes use of complex genetic models of cancer that better recapitulate human disease and development of 2D and 3D models of primary patient derived material for drug screening. She has been developing fast acquisition Raman spectroscopy and high-resolution fluorescence-based imaging of cancer cell behaviour and response to drugs in the in vivo setting. This includes direct drug imaging in preclinical (and potentially clinical) tissue samples.