Abigail Freeman Blatchford

I joined the Nuffield Department of Women's & Reproductive Health in October 2023 to start my DPhil with the EndoCaRe group. My project aims to generate endometrial epithelial organoids from endometriosis lesions, and to use them as a platform for studying disease formation and progression. I am investigating the mechanistic role that extracellular vesicles play in endometriosis, primarily using single EV analysis using flow cytometry, by comparing EV profiles derived from organoids and peritoneal fluid, which may allow for new diagnostic biomarker discovery. I am hoping to use these platforms to better understand the heterogeneity that is seen in endometriosis. My project is supervised by Dr. Jen Southcombe, Dr. Rebecca Dragovic and Dr. Christian Becker. 

Prior to attending Oxford, I completed my BSc in Bioengineering from Northeastern University, with a minor in Women’s Gender and Sexuality studies. As a bioengineer, I developed and began scaling up a protocol for differentiating induced pluripotent stem cells into lymphocyte and myeloid cell lineages to create a multi-cell-type therapeutic, for solid tumor oncology treatments. I employed gene editing techniques to the cell therapy product to allow for immune cell evasion and better cancer cell targeting.