The Chromosomal Instability Lab
Our common goal is to understand the mechanisms driving chromosomal alterations in cancer cells. We use a range of molecular and cellular biology techniques coupled to single cell genomics tools in order to answer our key questions. Meet the team below to find out more about their projects!
Meet the Team
Dissecting how different modalities of radiotherapy impact CNA patterns My previous projects have included determining how inducing either mitotic defects or DNA replication stress in stable diploid cells can generate reproducible patterns of aneuploidy. This may partially explain why we see such patterns in cancer genomes. I also examined the mechanisms driving chromosomal instability (CIN) in high grade serous ovarian cancer and how they relate to therapy resistance. My current project focuses on how radiotherapy affects both normal and cancerous breast cells. I am studying how different modalities of radiotherapy can induce DNA damage, triggering different DNA repair mechanisms, and then how that is related to formation of copy number alterations (CNAs) in the genome at the single-cell level. I hope to establish “repair profiles” of normal and cancerous cells which could be exploited to help us sensitise cancer cells to lower doses of radiotherapy and thus spare healthy tissue from side effects of therapy.