Ayesha Ejaz is a haematology registrar at Oxford University Hospitals. She graduated from the University of Glasgow with an MBChB with Honours and a BMedSci, First Class. She completed the Academic Foundation Programme in London at the Royal Free Hospitals, and went on to complete further training in medicine and in haematology at University College London Hospitals, Guy’s and St Thomas’ Hospitals, and in New Zealand. She obtained a Diploma in Tropical Medicine & Hygiene while living in London. She started her registrar training in Oxford as an Academic Clinical Fellow in Haematology. Her research focussed on the regulation of the globin genes and she spent part of her ACF in Boston Children’s Hospital where she looked at the regulation of the -globin genes, and in Bangkok, where she collected blood samples from patients with the severest form of ⍺-thalassemia, Barts hydrops fetalis syndrome.
Ayesha was awarded a Wellcome Trust Doctoral Training Fellowship for a DPhil in Biomedical and Clinical Sciences (Balliol College), under the supervision of Professor Doug Higgs and Professor James Davies at the Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine. Her work looks at the regulation of the embryonic -globin gene, an ⍺-like globin gene which could be reactivated as a gene-editing treatment strategy for patients with severe ⍺-thalassemia.
Ayesha is a clinical teaching associate at Exeter College and also teaches on the Lab Med course in Oxford.
