The Division of Cancer are delighted to have Dr Helen Pearson speak at our upcoming seminar.
Dr Pearson completed her PhD at Cardiff University, where she developed and characterised novel transgenic mouse models of prostate cancer. She then spent eight years at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in Melbourne, Australia, investigating the role of cellular polarity proteins in prostate cancer. During this time, her work demonstrated that heterozygous activating PIK3CAPIK3CA mutations can drive the development of prostate cancer.
Since returning to Cardiff University, Dr Pearson has been awarded both a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Fellowship and a CRUK Career Development Fellowship. She now leads the Prostate Cancer Translational Research Laboratory within the European Cancer Stem Cell Research Institute at Cardiff University and serves as an Associate Director of the Wales Cancer Research Centre.
Dr Pearson will provide an overview of the current ongoing preclinical trials underway in her laboratory exploring novel experimental therapeutic approaches to treat prostate cancer, with a focus on DNA damage repair, PI3K signalling and the tumour microenvironment.