Catherine Geh BSc

Senior Cell Scientist

Catherine has over 20 years experience in the pharmaceutical industry, with expertise in cell culture and assay development.

Catherine Geh BSc Expert in Recombinant Protein Expression

More about Catherine

Despite initially wanting to be a ballet dancer, Catherine was clearly destined for a career in science. Age 4 one of her favourite games was testing what dissolves (her notes from the time show Allbran doesn’t!).

After studying Biochemistry with German, she joined AstraZeneca where she gained over 18 years experience in the pharmaceutical industry. Catherine worked at all phases of the drug discovery process, developing high quality cellular screening assays and clinical biomarker assays on a variety of platforms, for a number of key Oncology programs. Most recently she worked in the Oncology Translational Science group, before joining Peak Proteins.

Outside of work, her dreams of tutus have been swapped for a muddy football pitch as she cheers on her children, although she does enjoy the occasional moment on the stage singing with a choir.

Heparan sulfates are critical regulators of the inhibitory megakaryocyte-platelet receptor G6b-B
Elife. 2019 8. pii: e46840
Vögtle T, Sharma S, Mori J, Nagy Z, Semeniak D, Scandola C, Geer MJ, Smith CW, Lane J, Pollack S, Lassila R, Jouppila A, Barr AJ, Ogg DJ, Howard TD, McMiken HJ, Warwicker J, Geh C, Rowlinson R, Abbott WM, Eckly A, Schulze H, Wright GJ, Mazharian A, Fütterer K, Rajesh S, Douglas MR, Senis YA.

High-Level Clonal FGFR Amplification and Response to FGFR Inhibition in a Translational Clinical Trial
Cancer Discov. 2016 Aug; 6(8): 838–851.
Alex Pearson, Elizabeth Smyth, Irina S. Babina, Maria Teresa Herrera-Abreu, Noelia Tarazona, Clare Peckitt, Elaine Kilgour, Neil R. Smith, Catherine Geh, Claire Rooney, Ros Cutts, James Campbell, Jian Ning, Kerry Fenwick, Amanda Swain, Gina Brown, Sue Chua, Anne Thomas, Stephen R.D. Johnston, Mazhar Ajaz, Katherine Sumpter, Angela Gillbanks, David Watkins, Ian Chau, Sanjay Popat, David Cunningham, and Nicholas C. Turner

Characterization of FGFR1 Locus in sqNSCLC Reveals a Broad and Heterogeneous Amplicon
PLoS One. 2016 Feb 23;11(2):e0149628. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0149628. eCollection 2016.
Rooney C, Geh C, Williams V, Heuckmann JM, Menon R, Schneider P, Al-Kadhimi K, Dymond M, Smith NR, Baker D, French T, Smith PD, Harrington EA, Barrett JC, Kilgour E.

Evaluating Robustness and Sensitivity of the NanoString Technologies nCounter Platform to Enable Multiplexed Gene Expression Analysis of Clinical Samples
Cancer Res. 2015 Jul 1;75(13):2587-93. doi: 10.1158/0008-5472.CAN-15-0262. Epub 2015 Jun 11.
Veldman-Jones MH, Brant R, Rooney C, Geh C, Emery H, Harbron CG, Wappett M, Sharpe A, Dymond M, Barrett JC, Harrington EA, Marshall G.

Employee Spotlight

I’m responsible for the expression and delivery of recombinant proteins, which involves preparing construct DNA and maintaining and transfecting the cells. Essentially, I need to get my work right, otherwise the rest of the team don’t have any proteins to purify! I also do some more bespoke work e.g. evaluating new culture media and cell lines, optimising transfection conditions for difficult proteins.

I worked at Astra Zeneca in in vitro Oncology drug discovery for 18 years. I was lucky enough to gain experience in all phases of the Drug Discovery process, including supporting progression of 2 candidate drugs into clinical trials in man. Most recently I worked in translational science generating data on clinical trial samples using techniques such as droplet digital PCR and NanoString.

I think it was probably biology and German, but I really enjoyed history too.

My mum and the teachers at school who all sparked my interest in science. I was fortunate to have great science teachers who really made the subjects come alive.

I enjoy lab work so I was looking for a role involving bench science, that was part-time and based in the Manchester area. Peak Proteins ticked all those boxes, it’s in a good location and has a really family -friendly approach to flexible working. Having worked in large pharma, I was also interested to see what life was like in a smaller company.

The people I work with, they’re great! Being part of a smaller company means you can really see the difference you make, how your work contributes to the overall success of the projects.

I sing in a choir and am learning to play the piano. I live in a musical household, so occasionally I find myself helping out in rehearsals with percussion, I once ended up playing the big bass drum on stage at the Royal Northern College of Music!

People who don’t clear up after their dogs.

I love Italian food, but I think it would have to be a roast dinner with plenty of crispy roast potatoes and gravy.

If I had a magic wand, I’d undo all the harm we’ve done to the planet, clean up the oceans, reverse the deforestation...

A lovely hug from my family and some chocolate.

My favourite film is The Matrix. Favourite song – so many to choose from, it’s too hard to select just one. I hope they never ask me to do Desert Island discs!

Darth Vader broke my Grandma’s armchair! (My dad knew the actor who played Darth Vader before he was famous).

Cell Science Team