Dr Alanna Green PhD, FHEA, BBiomedSci(Hons)

Principal Investigator, University of Sheffield

‘New therapeutic approaches to treat incurable cancers in bone’

 Email: a.c.green@sheffield.ac.uk

Dr Alanna (Leni) Green is a Research Fellow and Head of the Cancer and Bone Laboratory at The University of Sheffield, UK. Leni completed her PhD in 2016 at the St Vincent’s Institute of Medical Research, The University of Melbourne, Australia, where she discovered retinoic acid receptors regulate bone biology and in turn blood cell production. She also identified a new subpopulation of bone lining cells that form a niche for B-lymphopoiesis. In her first postdoctoral position at The University of Sheffield, she developed advanced preclinical models of myeloma and showed a bone anabolic can heal myeloma bone disease. This was followed a second postdoctoral position as a Project Leader in Sheffield with Prof Thomas Helleday, leading a programme of work on new cancer drugs targeting one-carbon metabolism enzyme, MTHFD2.
Dr Green’s group now focuses on bone control of cancer processes. Her team are developing novel therapeutic strategies for targeting cancer dormancy to eradicate disease in myeloma and cancers in bone.
Leni has been recognised as one of the best young researchers in the bone field, receiving over 20 awards for her research including the AIMM-ASBMR John Haddad Young Investigator Award and election to the ECTS Academy. She has 18 peer-reviewed publications (10 as first author, 1 senior author and 4 corresponding author) in top journals including JBMR, Bone, Blood, Nature Cancer and Nature Metabolism. She has given 7 invited talks and 25 conference presentations. Leni is on the Bone Research Society Committee, an Editor for the International Federation of Musculoskeletal Research Society’s initiative HubLE, in the National Cancer Research Institute (NCRI) Bone Metastasis Working Group and regularly reviews papers and grants. Leni’s work is currently funded by Blood Cancer UK and Sheffield Hospitals Charity.