Dr April Rose Foster

Staff Scientist

April is a Staff Scientist in the Haniffa group at the Sanger working on the wet-lab projects. Her focus is to develop skin organoid models to investigate developmental processes and for disease modelling in comparison to human tissue.

April has relevant experience in tissue culture, organoid model development and imaging techniques. April carried out her BSc research placement year with Prof. Ralf Paus investigating interaction between hair follicles and adipose tissue during the hair cycle. Next, April was awarded a BBSRC PhD studentship with Prof. Cath O’Neill and Prof. Rachel Watson at the University of Manchester. During her PhD, she worked on the osmolyte strategy of human skin with intrinsic and extrinsic ageing. She then completed a post-doctoral position at the Milner Therapeutics Institute, University of Cambridge. Here, she used patient- and iPSC-derived intestinal organoid models and developed functional assays to investigate transcriptional and epigenetic drivers of inflammatory bowel disease for drug discovery pipelines. April’s research experience thus far has driven her passion for using the skin to further our understanding of development and cellular interactions in health and disease. She joined the Haniffa lab in 2022.

My timeline

• Staff Scientist - Haniffa Group, Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute

• Research Associate - Milner Therapeutics Insititute, University of Cambridge

• PhD - Centre for Dermatology, University of Manchester

• BSc Research Placement - Institute of Inflammation and Repair, University of Manchester