Dr Liz Patton - Woman of the Week in Stylist magazine
Visible Women initiative – celebrating women making a difference to society: March 2018
On 8 January 2018, Stylist magazine launched a year-long campaign “Visible Women” to champion women’s equality, featuring content that celebrates women - past and present. This includes a feature series called ‘Woman of the Week’, a weekly celebration of contemporary women who are making a difference to society. The series aims to empower future generations of women to follow their lead, part of the Visible Women initiative that aims to help address the issue of gender inequality in the UK
Dr Liz Patton, a skin cancer research scientist, was featured as ‘Woman of the Week’ on Monday 5 March. Liz is a Reader and MRC Programme Leader Scientist at the MRC Institute of Genetics and Molecular Medicine. Liz leads a team of 10 and her lab at the MRC Human Genetics Unit has close collaborations with the Cancer Research UK Edinburgh Centre, both within the MRC IGMM.
Her research is focused on understanding how melanocytes, the pigment cells that become melanoma, develop, divide, migrate and maintain themselves within their microenvironment, as well as the genetic and cellular events that cause melanocytes to form moles that develop into invasive cancer. Her research uses a zebrafish model system that Liz originally developed, which allows the scientists to visualise the development and movement of melanocytes, as well as their aberrant progression to melanoma.
Dr. Patton’s research is funded by the Medical Research Council, the European Research Council, the Wellcome Trust, and a L’Oréal Paris USA–MRA Team Science Award for Women in Scientific Research.