School of Biosciences

Research Overview

My group is trying to understand how the combination of different tumour-initiating genetic lesions occurring in different normal stem and progenitor cells in the breast drives breast cancer heterogeneity. We are interested both in inter-tumour heterogeneity – the clinical differences between tumours – as well as intra-tumour heterogeneity and the formation of cells with ‘cancer stem cell’ properties within a neoplasia. We are also trying to understand how the biological processes occurring in normal stem cells can be re-activated in tumours to drive de novo production of tumour cells with stem cell-like properties.