Join Dr Alexandra Clipson for this educational webinar on her research at the Cancer Research UK National Biomarker Centre
This webinar is kindly sponsored by Illumina
This webinar features Dr. Alexandra Clipson, whose work at the Cancer Research UK National Biomarker Centre focuses on the development of circulating biomarkers to support clinical decision making in oncology. Dr. Clipson will discuss how her team harnesses a multi-omic liquid biopsy approach—integrating genomic, epigenomic, and fragmentomic features from circulating cell‑free DNA (cfDNA)—alongside machine‑learning classifiers, for the detection and molecular characterisation of tumours.
She will address the complexities of investigating Cancers of Unknown Primary (CUP) and describe how a cfDNA methylation-based blood test, CUPiD, enables tissue‑of‑origin classification, offering the potential for improved treatment options for patients with CUP.
Dr Clipson will share her research experience evaluating Illumina’s 5‑base solution within an integrated multi‑omics cfDNA workflow, including comparative analyses with other approaches and its impact on generating high‑quality data across multiple cfDNA features.
The webinar will be chaired by Dr Alicia-Marie Conway, Consultant Medical Oncologist.
Speaker biography
Dr. Alexandra Clipson, Deputy Team Leader, Non-Invasive Multi-omics Team, Cancer Research UK National Biomarker Centre, Manchester, United Kingdom
Dr. Alexandra Clipson is the Deputy Team Leader of the Non-Invasive Multi-omics team at the Cancer Research UK National Biomarker Centre. Her research expertise is centered on the development and delivery of NGS-based liquid biopsy assays, with a specialized focus on maximizing feature extraction from cell-free DNA (cfDNA) and cell-free RNA (cfRNA). She is a leading specialist in cfDNA methylation profiling, utilizing tissue- and tumor-specific patterns to reveal the origins of cfDNA and understand more about the biology of tumours. Beyond her current focus on liquid biopsies, Dr. Clipson has a background in the molecular characterization and whole exome sequencing of B-cell lymphomas from her postdoctoral position at the University of Cambridge, and she holds a PhD in Chemistry focused on target-guided synthesis for the discovery of novel enzyme inhibitors.
