Research in the Developmental & Cancer Biology Lab focuses on understanding the mechanisms that control normal development and cell function and then how these processes are perturbed in human disease such as cancer.
Specifically, research in the lab has focused on transcriptional and cell-matrix regulators of cell fate (eg. whether or not a cell undergoes proliferation or differentiation) in breast and prostate development and cancer. Using transcript profiling and subsequent mouse and cell based models, we have identified several novel regulators of normal breast and prostate development and shown that perturbing the function of these genes influences cancer progression. We are now exploring the functional mechanism of these genes, expanding our studies to human patient cohorts and investigating the role of newly identified targets.
As the genes and developmental pathways we work on control cell fate decisions in multiple systems we will examine the function of these genes in major human diseases such as breast & prostate cancer, bone metastasis, cardiovascular (artherosclerosis), muscle and heart disease
