The Signal Transduction Laboratory researches DNA damage signalling and repair pathways and their impact on cancer susceptibility through preventing DNA mutations. These studies have significant relevance to both basic biology (e.g. understanding the process of cell division, repair of DNA damage and mechanisms of ageing) and clinical medicine (e.g. effect on drug efficacy).
Several genes involved in the DNA damage response pathways are known to contribute to breast cancers. This group seeks to identify other known or new genes in these pathways which might have similar involvement in cancer susceptibility by preventing mutations in our DNA. This area is of critical importance to cancer research as the pathway controlling the DNA damage response are involved in tumour suppression and are believed to be mutated at the early stage in the evolution of cancer.
CURRENT RESEARCH
- to understand the role of Cep55 in cancer initiation and progression using overexpression mouse models
- to elucidate the pathophysiological role SSB1 and SSB2 using knockout mouse models
- to functionally characterise SSB1 and SSB2 interacting proteins
- to understand the role of Centrobin in the regulation of microtubule dynamics
- to perform pathway profiling in breast cancer for development of targeted therapies
- development of novel combination treatments against cancer in animal models including specific pathway inhibitors and targeted drug delivery
- understanding the cellular and molecular factors which determine the extent of tumour response to therapy including proliferation, apoptosis, DNA-repair, and cell cycle
- DNA damage
Staff
- Dr Murugan Kalimutho, Senior Research Officer
- Dr Prahlad Raninga, Research Officer
- Dr Devathri Nanayakkara, Research Officer
- Dr Mariska Miranda, Research Officer
- Dr Rahul Srivastava, Research Officer
- Dr Behnam Rashidieh, Research Officer
- Xue Lu, PhD student
- Ashny Ali, PhD student
- Simon Tria, Honour’s student
- Sivanandhini Sankarasubramanian, Master’s student
- Uma Raghupathi, Master’s student
- Stephen Miles, Scientific Technical Officer
We gratefully acknowledge financial support of
- Australian Research Council
- Australian Cancer Research Foundation
- National Breast Cancer Foundation
- National Health and Medical Research Council
- Cancer Council Queensland
- Susan G. Komen for the Cure Research Program