Research

The 40 trillion cells in our body trace their inheritance, through a vast ‘family tree’, back to the fertilised egg – their common ancestor. As we develop and get older, each of our cells acquires mutations and other changes in their DNA. Using cutting edge sequencing technologies, applied at scale, we trace the DNA changes in individual cells and their ancestral relationships. This allows us to look back in time and capture the start and growth of cancers, whilst observing and unraveling the lifelong evolutionary processes at play in our tissues. This helps us understand how we develop, why, when and how we get cancer, and why we age.

Current work:

Clonal trajectories to blood cancers:

We are exploring when different types of blood cancers commence their growth during the lifetime of patients. Studying the somatic mutation phylogenies, selection landscape and clonal evolutionary dynamics across haematological diseases and cancers will better inform effective early intervention strategies.

Methylation dynamics in normal tissues:

We are studying how the methylome changes over the human lifespan in healthy and diseased tissues using a phylogenetic approach.

Discovery – looking back in time

A new paradigm for blood cancer evolution (Williams et al, Nature 2022). We use single cell derived whole genome sequencing to trace the life history of blood cancer in patients. This family tree of blood production is from a patient who developed blood cancer at age 65, showing the acquisition of the disease causing JAK2 mutation over 50 years before disease presentation.