Investigators

Summary

DNA replication remains one of the main targets of cancer therapies as cancer cell generally proliferate faster and are prone to replication stress. My research interests involve studying the control of the initiation of DNA replication under normal conditions, in cancer, and in response to DNA damage. During my postdoctoral work, I have identified the signaling mechanism that mediates rapid and massive dormant origin firing in response to ATR or WEE1 inhibition. As a PI, I use ATR inhibition-induced origin firing, auxin-inducible degron systems, split Turbo-ID proteomics and other innovative cell biology approaches to study the molecular mechanism of the initiation of DNA replication in human cells. Our recent findings include discovery of the non-catalytic function of DNA polymerase epsilon and its dispensability for the assembly of CMG helicase in human cancer cells. My current projects focus on further studies into the non-catalytic function of DNA polymerase epsilon in cancer and non-cancer cells, identification of novel replication initiation factors in human cell lines, and the perturbations in replication proteins in cancers. Knowing the molecular mechanisms of origin firing will lead to developing drugs that specifically manipulate this process making cancer cells susceptible to DNA damage and other therapies.