Dr. Laura K. Donovan is an Assistant Professor at the UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health. She previously completed a fellowship in the Taylor Lab at the Hospital for Sick Children in Canada, where she contributed to the SU2C–St. Baldrick’s Foundation Immunogenomics Paediatric Dream Team. During this time, she helped pioneer the use of Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR) T-cell therapies for paediatric cerebellar brain tumours, leading to major advances, including the development of novel locoregional delivery strategies for medulloblastomas and ependymomas.

Dr. Donovan also co-led single-cell transcriptomic studies of paediatric medulloblastomas and ependymomas, generating key insights into the tumour–immune microenvironment, mechanisms of immune suppression, and the developmental origins of childhood cerebellar tumours.

At UCL, her research programme focuses on improving outcomes for children with primary, metastatic, and recurrent medulloblastoma. Drawing on her expertise in immunogenomics and animal modelling, she leads efforts to identify therapeutic targets that address intra-tumoural heterogeneity and immune suppression, and to develop preclinical models that enable the efficient translation of laboratory discoveries into clinical treatments.