Christina Basford PhD

Christina Basford studied for a PhD with Prof. Colin McGuckin at Newcastle University (2006-2010). Her thesis title was “Production of Stem Cell Populations from Umbilical Cord Blood for Regenerative Medicine” and the project had a dual focus: the automation of blood processing and stem cell enrichment, and cardiac differentiation of the umbilical cord blood derived stem cells.

She then went on to work as a post-doctoral research fellow with Prof. Michael Wheeler at the University of Toronto, where her research involved the derivation of pancreatic beta cells from adult stem cell sources, with a special interest in their function and characterisation relating to diabetes. She joined GSK in July 2013 where she worked as a cell process technologist within Advanced Therapy Delivery. Since 2015 she has led the Characterisation Sciences team within GSK’s Cell & Gene Therapy group, where the focus is to fully characterise the cells used in gene therapy products with the aim to to improve cell processing & inform comparability.