Valerie Speirs

Education Speirs studied zoology at the University of Aberdeen. She completed her graduate studies at the University of Glasgow.

Career and research Speirs research investigates Cancer biology, Breast cancer and Molecular pathology. She looked at the role of the CGA gene in endocrine response.

Speirs was a member of the Breast Cancer Campaign Scientific Advisory Board in 2008. She joined the Irish Health Research Board in 2009.

Speirs joined the University of Leeds in 2012. Since then she has been a member of the Sloane Project steering group, a five-year study of 1,000 women. As lead of the St James's University Hospital Institute of Cancer & Pathology, Speirs looked to transfer lab-based molecular pathology techniques into the clinic for the identification of breast carcinoma in men and women. She serves on the advisory group of the National Cancer Research Institute biomarkers advisory group. She has looked to identify the biomarkers for male breast cancer, finding that the androgen receptor biomarker had prognostic significance. She found that male breast cancers over-express eukaryotic initiation factors. She developed a series of resources to educate nurses in observing breast cancer.

In 2016 Speirs launched the virtual resource Sharing Experimental Animal Resources: Coordinating Holdings in Breast Cancer (SEARCHBreast), a platform to share materials that are surplus to animal studies of breast cancer. The project was part of a NC3R grant to develop smart approaches to reduce animal use in science. The resources are available for the characterisation of tumour biomarkers and to investigate the effect of treatment. In 2018 Speirs joined the University of Aberdeen. She holds a visiting lectureship at the University of Leeds. She is a member of the Cellular Molecular Pathology initiative of National Cancer Research Institute. They will investigate how endocrine disrupting agents modulate the activity of fibroblasts in high and low mammographic density breast tissue. They use a 3D in vitro model of the human mammary gland. She is associate editor for BMC Cancer.

Awards and honours Speirs was elected a Fellow of the Royal College of Pathologists (FRCPath) in 2007.