Professor Cleo Bishop, BSc, PhD

Profile

Cleo received her PhD in Biological Sciences from University College London in 2001. She then spent four years as a MRC Career Development Fellow in the laboratory of Prof. Chris Higgins at the MRC Clinical Sciences Centre (now the London Institute of Medical Sciences), Imperial College London, where she developed a keen interest in cancer biology.

In 2006, she moved to the Blizard Institute to pursue her interest in senescence and cancer, spending four years in the laboratory of Prof. David Beach (FRS). During this time, she established our Phenotypic Screening facility, and has used this technology to discover novel regulators of the ageing and senescence biomarker, p16.

In 2010, Cleo was awarded a Lectureship, promoted to Senior Lecturer in 2016, to Reader in Senescence in 2020, and to Professor in 2022. She held the post of Director of Graduate Studies for the Blizard Institute from January 2018 – October 2021.

Cleo is the Director of The QMUL Phenotypic Screening Facility, managed by Dr Luke Gammon and Dr Ryan Wallis. She is the academic lead for our MB PhD Programme, which launched in September 2022 and one of the Blizard Intermediaries. She also organises our award winning widening participation scheme, Blizard STARS.

Her previous posts have included Director of Graduate Studies for the Blizard Institute (January 2018 – October 2021) and Research Lead for her Centre (2023-2026).

LinkedIn profile

Teaching

Research

Research Interests:

Our current research interests in Senescence

Cleo’s group uses high-throughput screening, 2D/3D in vitro models, spatial biology, phenomics and machine learning to illuminate senescence mechanisms, understand how cells age, explore the interplay between healthy ageing and cellular rejuvenation, and target senescence for ageing and cancer therapy.

Ageing

Advanced age is the main risk factor for most chronic diseases in humans, but the basic machinery that drives ageing remains largely unknown. Senescence is one of the nine hallmarks of ageing and targeting cellular senescence represents an exciting strategy for promoting healthy ageing. Our ageing team are interested in:

• understanding the fundamental mechanisms that underpin this complex and often context dependent cellular programme;
• finding novel routes to cellular rejuvenation;
• exploring how senescence underpins ageing phenotypes; and
• discovery novel senostatic and senolytic approaches for healthy ageing.

Cancer

Senescence also acts as an important tumour suppressor mechanism in cancers such as breast cancer. Pro-senescence therapy is an exciting new approach to activate a stable cell cycle arrest to halt tumour growth and expose cancers to novel treatment regimes. Our cancer team is investigating:

• how cells sense early carcinogenic events;
• the cellular mechanisms by which senescence could be selectively triggered in breast cancer;
• new genetic targets for pro-senescence therapy; and
• novel senostatic and senolytic approaches for cancer therapy.

We are always interested in hearing from bright, motivated scientists who are interested in joining our team.

Group Members

Publications

Key Publications

• SAMP-Score: a morphology-based machine learning classification method for screening pro-senescence compounds in p16 positive cancer cells. Wallis R, Hughes BK, Moore M, O'Sullivan EA, McIlvenna LC, Gammon L, Hope A, Bellany F, Dixit P, Mac-kenzie C, Green C, Gray D, Bishop CL. Aging (Albany NY). 2025 Oct 30;17(11):2688-2716. doi: 10.18632/aging.206333.
• SenPred: a single-cell RNA sequencing-based machine learning pipeline to classify deeply senescent dermal fibroblast cells for the detection of an in vivo senescent cell burden. Hughes BK, Davis A, Milligan D, Wallis R, Mossa F, Philpott MP, Wainwright LJ, Gunn DA, Bishop CL. Genome Med. 2025 Jan 14;17(1):2. doi: 10.1186/s13073-024-01418-0.
• Guidelines for minimal information on cellular senescence experimentation in vivo. Ogrodnik M, Carlos Acosta J, Adams PD, d'Adda di Fagagna F, Baker DJ, Bishop CL, Chandra T, Collado M, Gil J, Gorgoulis V, Gruber F, Hara E, Jansen-Dürr P, Jurk D, Khosla S, Kirkland JL, Krizhanovsky V, Minamino T, Niedernhofer LJ, Passos JF, Ring NAR, Redl H, Robbins PD, Rodier F, Scharffetter-Kochanek K, Sedivy JM, Sikora E, Witwer K, von Zglinicki T, Yun MH, Grillari J, Demaria M. Cell. 2024 Aug 8;187(16):4150-4175. doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2024.05.059.
• An expedited screening platform for the discovery of anti-ageing compounds in vitro and in vivo. Lujan C, Tyler EJ, Ecker S, Webster AP, Stead ER, Martinez-Miguel VE, Milligan D, Garbe JC, Stampfer MR, Beck S, Lowe R, Bishop CL*, Bjedov I*. Genome Med. 2024 Jul 2;16(1):85. doi: 10.1186/s13073-024-01349-w.
• Senescence-associated morphological profiles (SAMPs): an image-based phenotypic profiling method for evaluating the inter and intra model heterogeneity of senescence. Wallis R, Milligan D, Hughes B, Mizen H, López-Domínguez JA, Eduputa U, Tyler EJ, Serrano M, Bishop CL. Aging (Albany NY). 2022 May 16;14(10):4220-4246. doi: 10.18632/aging.204072.

All Publications

Supervision