Professor Eithne Costello B.Sc., Ph.D., SFHEA

Personal Statement

Professor Eithne Costello gained her B.Sc. (Hons) in Pharmacology, at University College Dublin in 1988, and then undertook a cancer-based molecular biology PhD (1993), at University College Dublin, spending one-year of her Ph.D. research time at the University of Berne, Switzerland. She remained in Switzerland for a further six years where she was a postdoctoral fellow, firstly at the Swiss Institute for Cancer Research (ISREC), Lausanne and subsequently at the Institute of Microbiology, University of Lausanne. In 1999, she took up a lecturer post at the University of Liverpool, establishing her own research group focused on pancreatic cancer, with a particular emphasis on early diagnosis. She was on the Pancreatic Cancer UK scientific advisory board between 2012 and 2019 and has sat on national funding committees in France (French National Cancer Institute) and Ireland (Health Research Board).

Her group’s research is funded by Cancer Research UK, the European Union, Pancreatic Cancer Research Fund http://www.pcrf.org.uk/, North West Cancer Research, Pancreatic Cancer UK, and Pancreatic Cancer Action. She leads the CRUK-funded UK-Early Detection Initiative for pancreatic cancer, established to detect pancreatic cancer earlier in individuals with new-onset diabetes mellitus. She chairs the European Study Group for Pancreatic Cancer (ESPAC) translational steering committee, and is a member of CT-PAG. She is also a co-director of the University of Liverpool Good Clinical Practice Laboratory Facility.

Prizes or Honours

• Council Member (European Pancreatic Club, 2008)