Dr Shelly Lawson

Lecturer in Bone and Cancer Biology, University of Sheffield

‘The use of novel-bone targeted therapies to treat multiple myeloma’

Telephone: +44 (0) 114 215 9054
Email: m.a.lawson@sheffield.ac.uk

Dr Shelly Lawson is a Lecturer in the Department of Oncology and Metabolism at the University of Sheffield and leads the Sheffield Myeloma Research Team (SMaRT). Nationally she is a member of the UK Myeloma Forum (UKMF) executive committee, the Treasurer of the UK Bone Research Society (BRS) and a member of the NC3Rs student panel committee. In addition, she is an ordinary member of the International Bone and Mineral Society and the Cancer and Bone Society.

Her main research interests are targeting dormant myeloma cells in bone and developing better treatments to repair myeloma-induced bone disease. Over the last 15 years she has established several preclinical murine models of myeloma and developed a novel multiphoton microscopy technique to visualise single dormant cancer cells inside bone. This has led to an increased understanding of the role of the bone microenvironment in myeloma and how it influences tumour growth. More recently her work has focussed on novel therapeutic agents that can target dormant cancer cells (oncolytic viruses) or repair myeloma-induced bone disease (TGFb inhibition). She is currently investigating the use of bisphosphonates as drug carriers to target anti-myeloma therapies to bone. This work could potentially lead to significant patient benefit by increasing drug specificity and effectiveness, as well as reducing drug dosage and any side effects.

Dr Lawson is also involved with number of collaborative research projects at the University of Sheffield (Dr Frederik Claeyssens, Dr Stephan Verbruggen, Dr Enrico Dall’Ara, Prof Ingunn Holen, Dr Andrew Chantry), nationally (Dr Claire Edwards, University of Oxford and Dr Lisa Crawford, Queens University Belfast), and with industry partners (Theolytics, Oxford and Bold Therapeutics, Canada). Since 2012 she has been awarded over £2M in research funding.

View Shelly Lawson’s academic profile

View Shelly Lawson’s Publications