Biography:

Aris did his BSc degree in Democritus University of Thrace in Greece. His early work involved the study of various natural compounds as anti-cancer drugs. Then he moved to the University of Manchester where he carried out his PhD thesis studying the involvement of the mTOR effectors S6K1 and S6K2 in stress granule formation and persistence in cancer. Currently, he is working as a post-doc researcher in Anne Willis's lab studying various aspects of mRNA translation and how these can be used for anti-cancer drug development. His main focus is on the role of the hypusination pathway and eIF5A in translation elongation and initiation regulation and the downstream effects that act on cancer cell physiology and fitness.

Research interests:

The overall aim of Aris's work is to understand the function of factors that regulate the stages of protein synthesis in cancer and utilise this to propose novel anti-cancer treatments. Towards this goal he is using a number of techniques from SILAC mass spectrometry, to molecular biology techniques and bioinformatics.