Education

Ph.D., Molecular Oncology, University of Manchester (1989)

Research Areas and Projects

Ras is arguably the most important oncogene of all and may drive more than 30% of human cancers.  Yet it has defied efforts to target it therapeutically.   One of the most fascinating and poorly understood aspects of Ras biology is that deregulated Ras activity can promote cell death.  These Ras death pathways are subverted in human tumors, allowing the transforming effects of activated Ras to dominate.  I have spent a large part of the last 15 years defining the signaling mechanism used by Ras to kill cells and trying to understand how they are subverted in cancer.  These studies have focused extensively on the RASSF family of Ras death effectors, the majority of which were first identified and cloned by my group.  I also have a program involving the development of novel small molecules that act directly or indirectly to suppress Ras driven tumorigenesis.  The laboratory utilizes a variety of cellular and molecular biology techniques to pursue these studies.