Speirs studied zoology at the University of Aberdeen.[5] She completed her graduate studies at the University of Glasgow.[6][5] She worked with Ian Freshney on cell culture and became interested in how cell culture systems can be used to model disease.[2]
Speirs was a member of the Breast Cancer Campaign Scientific Advisory Board in 2008.[10] She joined the Irish Health Research Board in 2009.[10] She served as principal investigator of the Leeds Breast Cancer Campaign Tissue Bank.[5] She oversaw the launch of the tissue bank with the cancer research community in 2012.[5] The tissue bank was a founding member of the Breast Cancer Now tissue bank.[11]
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.[12] 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.[13] She serves on the advisory group of the National Cancer Research Institute biomarkers advisory group.[10] She studies oestrogen receptor biology and endocrine resistant breast cancer.[14] She has looked to identify the biomarkers for male breast cancer, finding that the androgen receptor biomarker had prognostic significance.[15] She found that male breast cancers over-express eukaryotic initiation factors.[16] She developed a series of resources to educate nurses in observing breast cancer.[17]
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.[18][19][20] The project was part of a NC3R grant to develop smart approaches to reduce animal use in science.[21] The resources are available for the characterisation of tumour biomarkers and to investigate the effect of treatment.[22] 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.[18][11] She is working with James Boyne at the University of Bradford on miRNA using blood and breast cancer tissues from the Breast Cancer Tissue Bank.[23] They will investigate how endocrine disrupting agents modulate the activity of fibroblasts in high and low mammographic density breast tissue.[24] They use a 3D in vitro model of the human mammary gland.[24] By identifying how oestrogen mimics effect human fibroblasts from areas of different breast density it will be possible to identify how the drives breast cancer development.[24] She has published extensively on breast cancer and has a h-index of over 40.[25] She is associate editor for BMC Cancer.[citation needed]
