Margaret Veldman-Jones BSc

Senior Cell Scientist

Margaret has significant cell culture experience gained from over 20 years in the pharmaceutical industry.

Margaret Veldman-Jones BSc | Peak Proteins

More about Margaret

Margaret came to the UK as an international sandwich student from the Netherlands with the idea to gain a year’s work experience in the pharmaceutical industry and have a break from her demanding training schedule as a heptathlete in athletics. Enjoying her student time and new-found freedom so much, she decided to stay, resulting in a career at AstraZeneca that lasted nearly 20 years. She worked across all phases of the drug discovery process, becoming an expert in cell culture techniques, therapeutic antibody development and biomarker approaches within Oncology.

Gaining a husband and starting a family along the way meant the UK couldn’t quite get rid of her and a secondment with her family to Reims (France) didn’t do the trick either. The decision not to move to Cambridge with AstraZeneca in 2016 was turned into an opportunity to change direction and pursue her artistic abilities. Margaret successfully completed an Art & Design foundation degree and continued to develop her painting skills at her home studio, thoroughly enjoying making customers happy with her commissions.

Missing working as a team, having banter in the lab and frankly some routine in her life, resulted in her come-back to science. The combination of art with science seems like her perfect world, still keeping an interest in athletics but now as a coach to support her daughter.

Differential activity of ATR and WEE1 inhibitors in a highly sensitive subpopulation of DLBCL linked to replication stress
Cancer Research, 2019 79 pp3762-3775
Young LA, Oplustil O’Connor L, de Renty C, Veldman-Jones MH, Dorval T, Wilson Z, Jones DR, Lawson D, Odedra R, Maya-Mendoza A, Reimer C, Bartek J, Lau A, O’Connor MJ.

The MEK inhibitor selumetinib complements CTLA-4 blockade by reprogramming the tumor immune microenvironment
Journal for ImmunoTherapy of Cancer, 2017 5(63), doi: 10.1186/s40425-017-0268-8
Poon E, Mullins S, Watkins A, Williams GS, Koopmann J, Di Genova G, Cumberbatch M, Veldman-Jones M, Grosskurth SE, Sah V, Schuller A, Reimer C, Dovedi SJ, Smith PD, Stewart R, Wilkinson RW.

Evaluating robustness and sensitivity of the NanoString Technologies nCounter platform to enable multiplexed gene expression analysis of clinical samples
Cancer Research, 2015 75(13) pp2587-93
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.

Reproducible, Quantitative and Flexible Molecular Subtyping of Clinical DLBCL samples using the NanoString nCounter system
Clinical Can. Res., 2015 21(10) pp2367-78.
Veldman-Jones MH, Lai Z, Wappett M, Harbron CG, Barrett CJ, Harrington EA, Thress KS.

Employee Spotlight

I’m a cell scientist working with insect cells, mammalian cells and E.coli to express recombinant proteins.

I had a long science career at AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals working in the Oncology and Translational Science departments. When the company moved to Cambridge, I took the opportunity to become a student again and completed a foundation degree in Art&Design.

Art and PE in equal measure; I’ve always loved being creative and working with my hands so Art was part of my A-level list. The other subject I always looked forward to was PE, especially if we did anything involving trampolines or acrobatics.

This is one of those questions where you write down a name and then immediately replace it with another. There are so many fantastic scientists who dedicated their lives to understanding something crucial in life like Peter Medawar in immunology and transplantation (just reading up on this subject again to try and understand current vaccination strategies better).

I’ll be very cliché and settle on Charles Darwin, because he was the first scientist that grabbed my attention when looking at the famous drawing of the ape-to-man transition, sparking many questions in me. I always fantasised what it would have been like to be part of the exploration team to the Galapagos, discovering new species and doing ground-breaking research.

Having worked for a major pharmaceutical company for 20 years, I was interested to explore what working for a small biotech company would be like. The job position was also very flexible and part-time, which allowed me to combine science with my budding art career. On top of that the location is ideal and the colleagues felt like my lost family.

Handing over the expressed proteins to the protein purification specialists. My job is done, giving me a sense of achievement.

Paint. Following my foundation year in Art&Design, I have set up a home studio and have now done numerous successful commissions and been part of exhibitions. To think that my work is on the walls of so many homes now is the greatest honour.

Plastic litter.

Anything deep fried really (I’m Dutch after all J!).

Eradicate dishonesty and have good, trustworthy leaders all around the world with global, long term visions for the planet.

Bird song. Spring is my favourite time of the year, the birds are going mad at the moment and it just lifts your heart to hear them sing.

Oh no, I’ve got so many!! Having just watched ‘Jaws’ for the 100th time surely that is up there with ‘Aliens’ for me, which I can watch over and over again. The suspense is just fantastic. Then again ‘Life of Brian' continues to make me laugh and I’ve still not gotten over the fact that Patrick Swayze isn’t with us anymore every time I see ‘Dirty Dancing’ again. Like I said I’m Dutch and like a bit of ‘cheese’.

‘Like the way I do’ by Melissa Etheridge is one of my all time favourite songs. Please honour me and play it very, very loud and use your air guitar whilst listening.

In my ‘previous life’ I could call myself a Dutch and Scottish (!) national heptathlete and long jump champion.

Cell Science Team