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Stephen Taylor is the Leech Professor of Pharmacology and Head of Division for Cancer Sciences at the University of Manchester. His research focuses on exploiting cell division to develop novel anti-cancer chemotherapeutics, with an emphasis on ovarian cancer. 

After completing his bachelor’s degree at the University of Manchester, Stephen moved to the University of Oxford to pursue his PhD. In 1995, he moved to Harvard Medical School on a Wellcome Trust Fellowship where he discovered components of an important cell cycle checkpoint that operates in mitosis to maintain genome stability. This launched his independent career and in 1998, Stephen moved back to Manchester as a BBSRC David Phillips Fellowship. From 2004 to 2015 he was a CRUK Senior Fellow, and was promoted to Professor of Cell Biology in 2009. He won the University’s Kilburn-Williams Medal in 2009, in 2015 he was awarded the Leech Chair in Pharmacology, and in January 2019 promoted to Head of Division for Cancer Sciences. 

During the early phase of his career, Stephen’s research focused on the biological mechanisms responsible for accurate chromosome segregation in mitosis, how these go awry during tumour evolution, and how they are disrupted by anti-mitotic chemotherapeutics such as paclitaxel. Since moving his team down to the Oglesby Cancer Research Building in 2016, he has developed a strong emphasis on ovarian cancer and is currently funded by a Programme Grant from Cancer Research UK entitled “Exploiting cell cycle vulnerabilities to develop novel therapeutic strategies for ovarian cancer”.