Summary
Dr Alexis Barr leads the Cell Cycle Control team. Their aim is to understand how proliferation-quiescence decisions are made. Achieving balanced proliferation-quiescence decisions is vital during normal development and in maintaining tissue homeostasis. Dysregulation of this control leads to hyperproliferative diseases, including cancer and fibrosis.
During her PhD at the CRUK Cambridge Institute with Dr Fanni Gergely, Alexis investigated the assembly of mitotic spindles. She moved to the Institute of Cancer Research in 2010 to work with Dr Chris Bakal to understand how cell cycle entry is controlled. During this time, Alexis also collaborated with Prof. Bela Novak at the University of Oxford. In 2018, she was awarded a CRUK Career Development Fellowship to investigate the role of quiescence in Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer. She started her lab at the Institute of Clinical Sciences in September 2018. The Cell Cycle Control team have expertise in quantitative single-cell imaging and molecular and cellular biology. They also collaborate with mathematicians to generate a mechanistic understanding of cell cycle control.
Publications
Journals
Swadling JB, Warnecke T, Morris KL, et al., 2022, Conserved Cdk inhibitors show unique structural responses to tyrosine phosphorylation., Biophys J, Vol:121, Pages:2312-2329
Barr AR, McClelland SE, 2022, Cells on lockdown: long-term consequences of CDK4/6 inhibition, Embo Journal, Vol:41, ISSN:0261-4189
Thomsen I, Kunowska N, de Souza R, et al., 2021, RUNX1 regulates a transcription program that affects the dynamics of cell cycle entry of naive resting B cells, Journal of Immunology, Vol:207, ISSN:0022-1767, Pages:2976-2991
Pennycook BR, Barr AR, 2021, Palbociclib-mediated cell cycle arrest can occur in the absence of the CDK inhibitors p21 and p27, Open Biology, Vol:11, ISSN:2046-2441
Pennycook BR, Vesela E, Peripolli S, et al., 2020, E2F-dependent transcription determines replication capacity and S phase length, Nature Communications, Vol:11, ISSN:2041-1723