I'm pleased to announce the appointment of Dr Barbara Guinn to the position of Associate Editor of Immunotherapy Insights, open access electronic journals published by Libertas Academica.

Dr. Guinn is a Senior Research Fellow at The University of Southampton and a visiting scientist at King’s College London. Dr. Guinn gained her B.Sc. in Genetics from the University of Wales, Aberystwyth in 1991 and a Ph.D. in Medicine from the University of Wales College of Medicine, Cardiff in 1995. Dr. Guinn was one of the first Leukaemia Research Fund Gordon Piller Ph.D. students in the year this prestigious award was initiated. Dr. Guinn undertook two postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Toronto (Autologous Bone Marrow Transplant Unit, Toronto General Hospital and Department of Immunology) and has maintained a history of support from the Leukaemia Research Fund throughout her career. In addition, Dr Guinn has received funding from Cancer Research U.K., the Elimination of Leukaemia Fund, Wessex Cancer Trust and British Society for Haematology. Dr. Guinn has published over 50 peer-reviewed manuscripts. She is on the editorial board of five journals and reviews manuscripts for more than 30 scientific journals on an ad hoc basis.

Dr. Guinn’s research at King’s College London, and more recently at the University of Southampton, has focused on the identification of leukaemia antigens in acute myeloid leukaemia using SEREX, microarray and RT-PCR. A number of epitopes from these antigens have been inserted into DNA vaccines and tested for suitability for near-future clinical trials. Dr. Guinn’s group has also worked on whole cell vaccines for acute myeloid leukaemia and B-cell lymphoma, and the development of tetramer arrays as a clinical end-point assay.

Dr Guinn brings a great deal of enthusiasm and experience to this role and will further strengthen these already strong journals.