Grant: Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship Program

Cancer is a somatic genetic disease where the genetic changes occur spontaneously in one part of the body. While many of these genetic changes are known, exactly how these changes result in cancer remains to be uncovered. Our work focuses on finding genes that affect the stability of the genome, using the budding yeast as a model organism. Even though it is difficult to perceive what we have in common with yeast, many of the fundamental biological pathways that are essential for life are very well conserved from yeast to man. Yeast is an excellent model system, for ethical and logistical reasons, since we can perform experiments on yeast that are not possible in humans, such as exposing them to chemotherapy drugs and studying the effects of these drugs on every single gene in the yeast. We have used genetic screens to find genes when overproduced decrease the stability of the genome in yeast. Currently, we are extending this work in human cells. The ultimate goal is to find genetic changes that are shared between yeast and human cancers and then utilize these genetic changes to either make cancer more susceptible to the effects of chemotherapy or to identify new chemotherapeutics.