Research interests
Most human cancers arise in epithelial tissues, such as the skin or intestinal tract. A population of basal stem cells normally proliferates to maintain epithelial homeostasis and to regenerate tissues after damage. The same stem cells are also the origin of tumour formation. We seek to understand how epithelial stem cells normally function and how their activity becomes misregulated in cancers.
My laboratory uses Drosophila, mouse and human organoids in culture as model systems to explore how stem cells construct epithelial tissues during development and how epithelial tumours can arise.
We focus on the questions of how cell polarity organises the behaviour of cells within an epithelium, and how signalling pathways control cell proliferation within an epithelia. A major interest has been the Hippo-YAP/TAZ signalling pathway, which responds to apical and basal polarity cues, cell-matrix interactions, and mechanical forces to regulate cell proliferation and cellular morphology during development.
Our experiments combine three main approaches to identify molecular mechanisms responsible for organising cell polarity and cell behaviour during tissue growth and morphogenesis in epithelia:
Genetic analysis of gene functions in vivo;
Live-imaging of epithelial tissue development; and
Computational modelling of cell polarity and cell behaviour.
Analysis of human cancer patient samples