Manita graduated with a BSc (Hons) in Applied and Human Biology from AstonUniversity in 2005, and completed her PhD in Pharmaceutical Microbiology and Immunology in 2009.
She started working as a Teaching Assistant at AstonUniversity, where she worked as a personal tutor to undergraduate biology and biomedical science students.
She then worked as a Research Technician in Diabetes at the University of Birmingham. Here she was involved in providing technical support to a research programme studying ways of manipulating the immune response to pancreatic islet grafts for the treatment of type 1 diabetes.
Manita subsequently joined the Centre for Liver Research at the University of Birmingham as a Research Technician where she provided technical support to the NIHR funded Liver Biomedical Research Unit. This position required her to assist with assays relevant to clinical trials running within the centre, as well as assisting with administrative tasks related directly to the delivery of the research. In addition, she provided technical support in the running of a cell therapy cleanroom and helped to support the manufacture of cellular vaccines as part of the ImmunoTACE clinical trial.
Manita then joined the Early Drug Development (EDD) team in April 2018 as the National Lung Matrix Trial Coordinator. This involves managing frequent Serious Adverse Event reports; and maintaining professional working relationships with multiple third parties, sites, and pharmaceutical partners. She became the Senior Trial Coordinator for the National Lung Matrix Trial in July 2020 and for ANICCA-class II, a Phase II trial assessing nivolumab in class II expressing microsatellite stable colorectal cancer in March 2022. She is also the Senior Trial Coordinator for SeluDex, an International phase I/II expansion trial of the MEK inhibitor selumetinib in combination with dexamethasone for the treatment of relapsed/refractory RAS-pathway mutated paediatric and adult Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia and SCART, a Phase I/II study of oral MEK inhibitor Selumetinib (AZD6244 Hyd-Sulphate) in Combination with Highly Active Anti-Retroviral Therapy in AIDS-associated Kaposi’s sarcoma.
In addition, Manita is the Senior Trial Coordinator for the Keto-Lung Trial, which will explore the addition of a ketogenic diet therapy to standard chemo-immunotherapy in squamous cell lung cancer, stratifying patients for a targeted metabolic intervention by histology.