Phenotypic Screening Facility

The Phenotypic Screening facility sits within the Blizard Institute on Queen Mary’s Whitechapel Campus with the nearest station Whitechapel Underground Station.

Address

Phenotypic Screening Facility
Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry
Queen Mary University of London
Blizard Institute, 4 Newark Street, London, E1 2AT

Download a site map here: Whitechapel campus map [PDF 576KB]

Or find us on Google Maps

For any enquires please email: Phenotypic-Screening@qmul.ac.uk

For more information about our equipment join our facility hub here

Meet our team

Professor Cleo Bishop, Director	Dr Luke Gammon, Facility Manager	Dr Ryan Wallis, Deputy Manager / Lead Bioinformatician
Cleo received her PhD in Biological Sciences from University College London in 2001. She then spent four years as a MRC Career Development Fellow in the laboratory of Prof. Chris Higgins at the MRC Clinical Sciences Centre (now the London Institute of Medical Sciences), Imperial College London, where she developed a keen interest in cancer. In 2006, she moved to the Blizard Institute to pursue her interest in senescence and cancer, spending four years in the laboratory of Prof. David Beach (FRS). During this time, she established the QMUL Phenotypic Screening facility. Her lab uses high-throughput genetic and compound screening in 2D and 3D, spatial biology, phenomics and ML to provide mechanistic insight and therapeutic innovation in senescence, ageing and cancer. Full Bio Publications	Luke received his PhD from the University of Bergen (UiB) in 2013, identifying and characterising cancer stem cells in head and neck SCCs. Having extensively used high-throughput screening equipment and analysis tools during this PhD, and while managing a stem cell initiative at Queen Mary (2006-2012), he began running the Phenotypic screening facility. He now has over 13 years of experience running the facility during which his facility has been awarded more than £3M multi-disciplinary multi-user equipment grants. With the purchase of the Cell DIVE in 2022, the first instrument of its type to be installed outside the US in academia, Luke now boasts a plethora of multiplex equipment, automation, analysis software and infrastructure. Recognised for his contributions, Luke received the Outstanding Professional Support Staff award in 2024, the FMD Staff Award for Technician of the year in 2025 and was highly commended at the Research and Innovation Awards the same year. Publications	Ryan received his PhD from Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry (QMUL) in 2020, where he studied the role of extracellular vesicles (EVs) in senescence in the laboratory of Cleo Bishop. He subsequently completed a postdoctoral position in the Bishop Lab, utilising high-throughput screening approaches to identify novel pro-senescence compounds in basal-like breast cancer. During this time, he also developed machine-learning tools for the identification of senescent cells from high-content microscopy images based solely on morphological features. Since 2024, Ryan has been Deputy Manager of the Phenotypic Screening Facility, where he established and now leads the bioinformatics service. In this role, he supports users by developing bespoke analysis pipelines for both high-content imaging and multiplex immunofluorescence datasets, and contributes to user training across all facility systems and software platforms Publications

For questions, training and support please contact a member of the team at Phenotypic-Screening@qmul.ac.uk

For questions, training and support please contact a member of the team at:

Phenotypic-Screening@qmul.ac.uk

All equipment is booked on the iLabs booking system:

https://qmul.corefacilities.org/service_center/show_external/3579

Please contact us to discuss charges for extended imaging times such as large scale screening projects or long-term live cell imaging

For questions, training and support please contact a member of the team at Phenotypic-Screening@qmul.ac.uk

Selected Publications

• Biddle, A. et al., 2016. Phenotypic Plasticity Determines Cancer Stem Cell Therapeutic Resistance in Oral Squamous Cell Carcinoma. EBioMedicine, pp.1–8. Available at: http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S2352396416300056.
• Lewis, A. et al., 2015. Low Serum Levels of MicroRNA-19 Are Associated with a Stricturing Crohn’s Disease Phenotype. Inflamm Bowel Dis, 21(8), pp.1926–1934.
• Lowe, R. et al., 2015. The senescent methylome and its relationship with cancer, ageing and germline genetic variation in humans. Genome biology, 16, p.194. Available at: http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=4574115&tool=pmcentrez&rendertype=abstract.
• Murray, A. et al., 2015. Brief report: Isogenic induced pluripotent stem cell lines from an adult with mosaic down syndrome model accelerated neuronal ageing and neurodegeneration. Stem Cells, 33(6), pp.2077–2084.
• Overhoff, M.G. et al., 2014. Cellular senescence mediated by p16INK4A-coupled miRNA pathways. Nucleic Acids Research, 42(3), pp.1606–1618.
• Nijhuis, A. et al., 2014. In Crohn’s disease fibrosis-reduced expression of the miR-29 family enhances collagen expression in intestinal fibroblasts. Clinical Science, 127(5), pp.341–350. Available at: http://clinsci.org/lookup/doi/10.1042/CS20140048.
• Liu, L. et al., 2011. A whole genome screen for HIV restriction factors. Retrovirology, 8(1), p.94. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1742-4690-8-94.
• Borgdorff, V. et al., 2010. Multiple microRNAs rescue from Ras-induced senescence by inhibiting p21(Waf1/Cip1). Oncogene, 29(15), pp.2262–2271. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/onc.2009.497.
• Bishop, C.L. et al., 2010. Primary cilium-dependent and -independent hedgehog signaling inhibits p16INK4A. Molecular Cell, 40(4), pp.533–547. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.molcel.2010.10.027.