Dr. Sharon McKenna graduated from the University of Leicester in 1990 with an Honours Degree in Molecular Biology. She obtained her PhD at the Leukaemia Research Fund Laboratories, in the University of Wales, College of Medicine, Cardiff, UK 1995. Following post-doctoral research at Cardiff and the Department of Biochemistry, UCC, Dr. McKenna was appointed College Lecturer in the Department of Biochemistry, UCC in 1999. She lectured on various aspects of Biochemistry and the Molecular Basis of Disease to undergraduate Science, Medical and Dental students. Dr. McKenna was also group leader of the Signal Transduction Laboratory. In 2002, Dr. McKenna was appointed as a Principal Investigator at the Cork Cancer Research Centre (CCRC). She is responsible for the direction of the Autophagy program and is also responsible for the supervision of graduate research projects including PhD’s and MD/PhD’s.

Dr McKenna is responsible for the direction of the Autophagy program at CCRC. Her team is investigating how autophagy influences response to chemotherapy, how to improve therapeutic regimes with novel targeting strategies and how to predict response to therapy with novel bio-markers. Her focus is on cancers with a relatively poor prognosis such as oesophageal, ovarian and AML.

Engaged in research led post-graduate teaching. Masters, MD's and PhDs.