Dr Andrea Lampis is a Higher Scientific Officer at the ICR working in the Centre for Paediatric Oncology Experimental Medicine. He is dedicated to the spatial imaging of cancer (studying the full three-dimensional structure of tumours) and using this knowledge to identify new drug targets to provide better treatments for children.

He has a degree in Biology from the University of Milan and worked at the Istituto Nazionale dei Tumori, also in Milan, before moving to the UK to obtain his PhD at the ICR. His PhD involved studying regions of genetic material called ‘non-coding RNAs’ in gastrointestinal cancers to develop ways of identifying which patients might be sensitive or resistant to particular therapies.

After his PhD, he worked to develop ways of imaging multiple different proteins within cancer cells at the same time (multiplex immunofluorescence) to create digital images that can be analysed by computers (digital pathology). When used together, these new technologies and methods are powerful tools to study the cancer microenvironment and its interaction with the immune cells in intact tissues as would occur in a tumour within the body, rather than in flat two-dimensional layers of cancer cells. This will provide unique insights to identify potential new targets for therapies thus providing better treatment options for patients.