Abstract

Dear Colleagues,

The Cambridge Institute Scientists’ Society (CISS) would like to invite you all to our biannual seminar series on 23 January 2016 at 13:30 in the CRUK CI Lecture Theatre

Our guest lecturer is: Prof. Steve Jackson FRS F MedSci, Frederick James Quick Professor of Biology, Member of the Biochemistry Department. Steve is also an Associate Faculty Member of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute. He identified many DNA -damage-response (DDR) proteins, established how they function and how they are in many cases strongly evolutionarily conserved, and helped define how their dysfunction yields cancer and other diseases. He has received various national and international prizes, and his publications have collectively been cited >53,000 times (Google Scholar;h-index 115). It will be a fantastic talk and we hope to see you all there!!

Talk title: Cellular responses to DNA damage: molecular mechanisms and therapeutic applications

Research summary/interests: Characterising the cell biology of DNA -damage response (DDR) pathways to discover new therapeutic strategies, using yeast and mammalian cells in culture. They aim to identify important DDR proteins, and their functions, regulation and roles in diverse cellular events. They recently developed a new screening technique to find enzymes that modify DDR protein activity, focusing on the many cellular proteins involved in ubiquitylation/deubiquitylation. They are also exploring the concepts of synthetic lethality and synthetic viability to identify novel therapeutic targets for a range of human diseases.