Panagiota Tsokkou

Panagiota Tsokkou completed her studies in Scotland, UK, moving there from Cyprus. She received her BSc with Honours degree in Biomedical Sciences from the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow. As an undergraduate, she developed a strong interest in immunology, particularly autoimmune and inflammatory diseases. Hence, for her Honours project she joined the laboratory of Dr. Hui Rong-Jiang, where she studied macrophage polarization in Experimental Autoimmune Encephalomyelitis, a mouse model of Multiple Sclerosis.

Thanks to a scholarship she was awarded from the Scottish Funding Council, she continued her studies at the University of Glasgow, where she attained a MRes degree in Biomedical Sciences, specializing in Integrative Mammalian Biology. With a keen interest in inflammatory diseases, she joined the laboratory of Prof. Dr. Joanna B. Wilson, where she investigated the role of chitinase-like proteins in a mouse model of Epstein-Barr virus induced chronic skin inflammation and associated carcinogenesis.

Following this, she became interested in cancer immunology, particularly the cross-talk between immune and cancer cells within the tumor microenvironment. Thus, she subsequently joined the laboratory of Dr. Luke Boulter at the University of Edinburgh, where she studied Wnt signalling in liver cancer as part of her MSc by Research degree in Genetics and Molecular Medicine. During this time, she also worked on liver fibrosis and published some of her findings.

After completing her postgraduate studies, Panagiota worked as a Scientist at Antibody Analytics, a biotechnology company in Glasgow, where she performed Surface Plasmon Resonance analyses for drug development programs.

As a PhD candidate in the laboratory of Prof. Dr. Erwin F. Wagner at the Medical University of Vienna, Austria, her research focuses on elucidating the link between inflammatory skin diseases and cancer development, utilizing genetically engineered mouse models and patient-derived materials, with the ultimate goal of identifying new therapeutic targets.