OUR COLLABORATORS
Our lab group is lucky enough to work closely with a great range of scientists locally, nationally, and internationally.
PROF OWEN SANSOM
FRSE, FMEDSCI
Prof Sansom is the Director of the Beatson Institute, Glasgow. Utilising state-of-the-art preclinical models harbouring key driver mutations, his group interrogates the molecular mechanisms underpinning CRC initiation, progression, response to therapy, and metastasis, to identify early-stage diagnostic biomarkers and develop stage- and subtype-specific targeted therapies.
PROF DAN LONGLEY
Prof. Longley’s laboratory focuses on overcoming drug resistance in solid tumours by activating cell death in cancer cells. They are currently exploring a number of approaches such as pre-clinical and clinical development of small molecule inhibitors of anti-apoptotic proteins, including novel drug delivery strategies, and the identification of predictive biomarkers to enable the targeted use of novel anti-cancer therapeutics in molecularly-defined patient populations.
The Longley & Kerr labs collaborate on multiple projects focused on overcoming drug resistance using pre-clinical colorectal and lung cancer models.
DR PHILIP DUNNE
Dr Dunne’s interdisciplinary Molecular Pathology Research Group (www.dunne-lab.com) uses patient-based discovery and biological/mechanistic characterisation to identify and test therapeutic vulnerabilities in early-stage colorectal cancer. The group plays a leading role within a number of international consortiums (S:CORT; Oxford, ACRCelerate; Glasgow), enabling the lab to have access to state-of-the-art clinical trial tumours tissue and a suite of pre-clinical models of disease, including GEMMs, organoids, PDXs and patient-derived cell lines. The team is particularly interested in the mechanisms underpinning subtypes associated with crosstalk between intrinsic (epithelial) and extrinsic (stromal and immune) components of the tumour.
The group is both "wet-lab" and "dry-lab", combining in vivo and in vitro molecular biology, in situ molecular pathology and in silico translational bioinformatics in early detection research.
DR DONNA SMALL
Dr Small is a Lecturer in Tumour Immunology based at PGJCCR working on the role and function of proteases and anti-proteases in immunoregulation in respiratory cancers. They use complex models and co-culture systems to understand how proteases and anti-proteases alter immune cell biology, particularly in T-cells and macrophages, and to unravel the multifaceted immune mechanisms that permit these enzymes to manipulate the tumour microenvironment leading to tumour progression, metastasis and poor response to anti-cancer therapies.
Dr Small and Dr Kerr collaborate on a PhD project examining the role of Cathepsin S in NSCLC models.
DR AIDEEN RYAN
Dr. Aideen Ryan is a Lecturer in the School of Medicine, National University of Ireland, Galway and is a member of the Lambe Institute. Her research interests include understanding mechanisms of immune modulation of mesenchymal stromal cells, colon tumour cell and stromal cell interactions in the colon cancer microenvironment.
Dr Oliver Treacy, a Postdoctoral Research Fellow from the Ryan lab, will join us as a visiting researcher to develop 3D tumour/stromal organoid models of CRC.
DR KARL BUTTERWORTH
Dr Butterworth is a Senior Lecturer in Translational Radiation Biology at the PGJCCR where his lab focuses on exploiting opportunities for biological optimisation in radiotherapy through rationally designed combination treatmentsand spatio-temporal delivery techniques. Central to his programme is the application of mouse models with small animal image guided radiotherapy with a particular emphasis on normal tissue injury linking preclinical imaging and functional tissue assessment.
Dr Butterworth and Dr Kerr collaborate on a PhD project examining the role of metabolic reprogramming in mediating radiation therapy response in NSCLC models.
DR SIMON MCDADE
The Functional Genomics Group led by Dr McDade is focussed on the use of cutting edge genomics technologies and aligned integrative bioinformatics strategies to investigate transcription factor function and de-regulation in disease with a particular interest in the p53 family. Their ultimate goal is to use this information to identify cancer specific dependencies, that represent “Achilles heels”, exploitable with novel treatment strategies to improve patient outcomes in cancer and other diseases.
They have an increasing interest in developing easy-to-use bioinformatics tools or “Apps” that simplify the complex integrative analysis of genomic data.