Grant: Operating Grant - PA: Genetics (Bridge Funding: Research Priorities)

The inhibition of proteins that work to repair damaged DNA has been an important contributor to cancer therapy. However, there is a lot of redundancy in how cells repair DNA, which can limit the effect of DNA repair inhibitors in cancer therapy. To overcome this redundancy, multiple proteins have to be inhibited simultaneously or a single protein can be inhibited in such a way as to block the activity of multiple repair proteins. To find blocking inhibitors, we have devised a new genetic method to identify and characterize protein targets that can block multiple repair pathways simultaneously. Here, we will use this approach to characterize a family of DNA repair proteins that are attractive anti-cancer therapeutic targets and work on designing chemical inhibitors. The project will explore a new approach to overcome the challenge of target redundancy in tumours and develop cross-acting inhibitors for a class of DNA repair proteins.