Understanding how blood cancer cells respond and adapt to treatment
We challenge cancer cells to understand why some die during treatment while others survive and adapt. Our goal is to use this knowledge to improve how treatments for blood cancers are selected and given.
Our research focuses on how cancer cells behave and change under therapeutic pressure. Some cells are resistant from the start, while others adapt during treatment. We study both forms of resistance using patient-derived cells that reflect the diversity of blood cancers, together with cell-line models that allow us to investigate biological mechanisms under controlled conditions.
We use treatment not only to identify potential therapies, but also as a tool to understand cancer biology. Our main approaches include high-throughput drug sensitivity and resistance testing, where cells are exposed to large collections of treatments, and single-cell profiling, which reveals how individual cells within the same sample can behave differently. By combining these approaches with molecular measurements and computational analysis, we identify cell states, vulnerabilities and adaptive responses that are not always visible from static genetic and molecular information alone.
We also develop experimental and computational methods to measure cancer cell behaviour more accurately. This includes approaches for working with limited patient material, following rapid changes during treatment, integrating functional and molecular information, and ensuring reliable results from sample collection to analysis.
Our biological discoveries support the development of functional precision medicine for blood cancers. We aim to improve three connected aspects of treatment: choice, timing and sequence. By understanding which intervention is effective, when cancer cells are most vulnerable and in which order treatments should be given, we hope to limit adaptation and prevent surviving cells from recovering.
