Epithelial cell fate and tumour development

About the project

About the Project Group Leader: Professor Walid Khaled ( Khaled Group ) Keywords: Tumour initiation, Cancer Prevention, lineage tracing Research Summary Over the last ten years, Professor Khaled has established an ambitious research programme focusing on studying the early cellular and molecular changes associated with tumour initiation. His lab’s ultimate aim is to translate these discoveries into novel cancer detection and prevention methods. He has been awarded several grants, including two competitive fellowships from CRUK - Career Establishment Award (2014-2021) and Programme Foundation Award (2021-2027). During this period, his lab made significant contributions to the field, some of which are highlighted below. His contributions to the field include making all the sequencing data generated in the lab publicly available through easy-to-use websites. He also shares the lab’s protocols through his website and some cases through youtube videos (eg. single cell prep for the human breast cell atlas). Based on their single cell work in mouse and human they have identified several pathways that are associated with precancerous cellular changes in the women at high risk of breast cancer. This includes the observation that immune cells in the healthy breast tissue from BRCA1/2 high risk women exhibit an exhausted phenotype. These dysfunctional immune cells are normally only found at latestage tumours. With further funding from CRUK they started a pre-clinical trial to assess the efficacy of these drug paving the way to window of opportunity trials in human. To Apply: We encourage prospective PhD students to reach out directly to Professor Khaled, wtk22@cam.ac.uk to discuss potential projects and supervision. Applicants must secure the support of a Supervisor within a laboratory before submitting an application . Please contact the project Supervisor(s) to discuss potential supervision, proposed research project and funding options, which should then be used to write your formal application. Applications will be submitted to the ' PhD in Stem Cell Biology ' and full course details can be found at https://www.postgraduate.study.cam.ac.uk/courses/directory/blscpdscp

Research areas