Dr Kiki Cano-Gamez (she/they)

Kiki is a researcher in human genetics and genomics with a strong interest in precision medicine and the biology of circulating nucleic acids, as well as their role in disease.

Kiki trained in immunology and functional genomics, with an emphasis on the use of transcriptomics, epigenomics, and single-cell technologies. She completed a BSc in Biotechnology at Tecnologico de Monterrey, State of Mexico, Mexico (2015), after which she moved to the UK to pursue an MPhil in Biological Science at the University of Cambridge (2017). She completed her PhD at the Wellcome Sanger Institute (2020), where she was funded by a Gates Cambridge Scholarship and trained under the supervision of Dr Gosia Trynka. Her doctoral research focused on the role of CD4+ T cells in common immune diseases.

In 2021, Kiki joined Professor Julian Knight's group at the University of Oxford as a postdoctoral researcher. There, she studied extreme responses to infection such as sepsis, with the focus of developing precision medicine methods to better stratify and treat patients. This sparked Kiki’s interest on the use of circulating nucleic acids as biomarkers to track immune and organ function. 

Kiki joined the University of Exeter’s Department of Clinical and Biomedical Sciences (CBS) as a lecturer in 2025, where she researches the role of circulating nucleic acids in health and during immune diseases with the aim of better understanding their biology, and exploring their utility as novel biomarkers.

Kiki is always open to hearing from prospective students and researchers interested in collaborations. She particualrly welcomes expressions of interest from individuals from underrepresented backgrounds (e.g. members of the BAME or LGBTQ+ communities, as well as neurodivergent or otherwise disabled individuals) interested in genomics and biomedical research.