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
Wiggins BG, Wang Y-F, Burke A, et al., 2023, Endothelial sensing of AHR ligands regulates intestinal homeostasis, Nature, Vol:621, ISSN:0028-0836, Pages:821-829
Weston WA, Barr AR, 2023, A cell cycle centric view of tumour dormancy, British Journal of Cancer, ISSN:0007-0920
Wiecek AJ, Cutty SJ, Kornai D, et al., 2023, Genomic hallmarks and therapeutic implications of G0 cell cycle arrest in cancer, Genome Biology, Vol:24, ISSN:1474-7596
Hughes F, Barr A, Thomas P, 2023, Patterns of interdivision time correlations reveal hidden cell cycle factors, Elife, Vol:11, ISSN:2050-084X
Swadling JB, Warnecke T, Morris KL, et al., 2022, Conserved Cdk inhibitors show unique structural responses to tyrosine phosphorylation, Biophysical Journal, Vol:121, ISSN:0006-3495, Pages:2312-2329