Rate My Professor Steven Pollard

Steven Pollard holds a BSc (Hons) in Biochemistry from the University of Bath and a PhD in Developmental Genetics from the MRC National Institute for Medical Research. His early career included a research internship at St Jude Children’s Research Hospital and postdoctoral positions at the University of Edinburgh and the University of Cambridge, where he worked with Professor Austin Smith on neural stem cell biology. He established his independent research group at the UCL Cancer Institute in 2010 before relocating to the University of Edinburgh in 2013 as Group Leader at the Centre for Regenerative Medicine and Edinburgh Cancer Research Centre. He held a Cancer Research UK Senior Research Fellowship from 2014 to 2019 and was promoted to Professor of Stem Cell and Cancer Biology in 2018. Pollard currently serves as Associate Director of the Cancer Research UK Scotland Centre, Director of the Brain Cancer Centre of Excellence, and Co-Director of the BTR Scottish Brain Cancer Centre of Excellence and the Edinburgh-UCL Brain Cancer Centre of Excellence. He is also Founder and Chief Scientific Officer of the University of Edinburgh spin-out company Trogenix Ltd.

Pollard’s research focuses on neural stem cells and their role in glioblastoma and other brain cancers, exploring mechanisms of self-renewal, differentiation, epigenetic regulation, and therapeutic targeting through genome editing, chemical screening, and synthetic biology approaches. His laboratory has developed widely used patient-derived glioma stem cell models and tools that support drug discovery and gene therapy strategies now advancing toward clinical testing. He has contributed to numerous high-impact publications, including studies on FOXG1 and SOX2 in glioblastoma published in Genes & Development and Cell. Pollard has served on Cancer Research UK committees and advised UK charities and funders including Brain Tumour Research and UKRI. His work has advanced understanding of cancer stem cell biology and supported the development of precision therapies for aggressive brain tumours.