Dr Maria Neofytou
Dr Maria Neofytou obtained her PhD in Medical Genetics from The Cyprus Institute of Neurology and Genetics in Nicosia, Cyprus. Currently, she is enrolled in the Postgraduate Certificate in Adult Learning and Professional Development to become a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy in the UK.
Dr Neofytou has completed two years of postdoctoral research at KU Leuven University in Belgium, where she focused on developing novel methods for non-invasive prenatal diagnosis of monogenic disorders. After that, she moved to Oxford University at the MRC Weatherall Institute Of Molecular Medicine for a year and then joined the lab of Prof Nitzan Rosenfeld at Cancer Research UK (CRUK) Institute at Cambridge University as a postdoctoral researcher. Her research interests focused on the early molecular diagnosis of cancer using nucleic acids in plasma and urine.
At the University of Westminster, Dr Neofytou is part of the Cancer Mechanism and Biomarker Research Group in the School of Life Sciences. Her main research interest is in Liquid Biopsy, with a specific focus on early cancer detection, but she also continues her work on non-invasive prenatal diagnosis. Currently, she is a collaborator on a Cancer Research UK-funded grant for developing novel methods for early detection of breast and ovarian cancer with scientists from Cambridge University.
Dr Neofytou has over 10 years of experience working with human blood and tissue samples, with expertise in Next Generation sequencing and other omic technologies. She has published her work in peer-reviewed journals such as Annals of Oncology, Genetics in Medicine, Clinical Chemistry, and Annals of Neurology. She has also presented her work on liquid biopsy at national and international conferences, including the International Society of Prenatal Diagnosis (ISPD) and the Hellenic Society of Liquid Biopsy.
Dr Neofytou is a member of the European Society of Human Genetics (ESHG) and the European Association of Cancer Research (EACR).
