Elise Ling PhD

Elise graduated from Newcastle University with a degree in Biochemistry which included a year in industry at Elanco. During her placement year, Elise worked in the fermentation department developing a small scale fermentation model for microbial cell growth. This was Elise's first experience of working in the pharmaceutical industry, which she thoroughly enjoyed!

Inspired by her placement year, Elise decided to continue on her scientific research journey by pursuing a PhD in Biochemistry and Structural Biology. Elise studied the human protein, DNA Topoisomerase II Beta, which is a target during chemotherapy. During her PhD, Elise gained experience in the complete pipeline of protein crystallography going from DNA sequence to protein structure. The structures Elise generated gave insight into the conformational changes that occur within the enzyme during ATP hydrolysis and identified key drug binding residues. In the final year of her PhD, Elise undertook a three month placement at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto whereby she studied patient mutations in vivo.

After completing her PhD, Elise worked at GSK in the Biopharm Process Research group as a Senior Downstream Scientist. She worked on a range of biotherapeutic proteins, generating robust and scalable purification processes for transfer to clinical trial manufacturing plants. After several years of living down South, Elise was keen to move back up to the North-West to be nearer to friends and family and continue working on exciting protein projects.

Outside of work, Elise enjoys cooking, running and skiing (when she gets the chance!)