Overview
Margaret Anne Stanley, OBE FMedSc, is a British virologist and epithelial biologist. She attended the Universities of London, Bristol, and Adelaide. As of 2018, she is an Emeritus Professor of Epithelial Biology in the Department of Pathology at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences. She is also an Honorary Fellow of the UK Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and an honorary fellow of Christ's College, Cambridge. Stanley is a research scientist in virology focusing on the human papillomavirus (HPV). Her research work has led to new scientific findings on HPV. Additionally, she uses her expertise on HPV to serve on multiple advisory committees and journal editorial boards.
Research
Stanley's main research interest is the pathogenesis of HPV, and she currently leads a research group focusing on the prevention and treatment of human papillomavirus infection, which causes cervical cancer.
Early in her research, she generated a non-tumorigenic human cervical keratinocyte cell line, W12, from a low-grade cervical lesion. W12 cells can harbor HPV-16 episomes and thus allow researchers the ability to investigate the complex processes of cervical cancer development. Additionally, she helped to discover the temporal association between high-level chromosomal instability and high-risk human papillomavirus (HR-HPV) integration, a key step in cervical carcinogenesis, such that integration precedes chromosomal abnormalities.
She also studies the host cell responses to infection with the human papillomavirus in immunodeficient individualsimmunodeficient, most commonly HIV-positive immunosuppressant individuals. Evidence from animal models shows that a CD4(+) T cell-dominated Th1 response leads to regression of anogenital warts, an effective cell-mediated immune response (CMI). She states that a failure to produce this effective CMI response to the human papillomavirus facilitates viral persistence, and this can lead to the progression of high-grade disease and invasive cervical cancer.
From Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0).