Professor Trevor Graham

MSc, MRes, PhD
Professor of Cancer Evolution
Group Leader, Research Theme Lead
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Research Focus

My lab measures the patterns of clonal evolution that define carcinogenesis and develops novel mathematical tools for analysis and prediction. By characterising tumour evolution, we aim to find better ways to determine prognosis and more effective ways to treat cancers.

Key Publications

Quantification of subclonal selection in cancer from bulk sequencing data. Williams MJ, Werner B, Curtis C, Barnes C*, Sottoriva A*, Graham TA*. Nature Genetics (2018) 50(6) 895-903. PMID: 29808029

Identification of neutral tumor evolution across cancer types. Williams M, Werner B, Barnes C, Graham TA*, Sottoriva A*. Nature Genetics (2016) 44, 238-244. PMID: 26780609

The effects of mutational processes and selection on driver mutations across cancer types. Temko D, Tomlinson IPM, Severini S, Schuster-Bockler B*, Graham TA*. Nature Communications (2018) 9(1) 1857. PMID: 29748584

Robust RNA-based in situ mutation detection delineates colorectal cancer subclonal evolution. Baker AM, Huang W, Wang XMM, Jansen M, Ma XJ, Kim J, Anderson CM, Wu X, Pan L, Su N, Luo Y, Domingo E, Heide T, Sottoriva A, Lewis A, Beggs AD, Wright NA, Rodriguez-Justo M, Park R, Tomlinson IPM*, Graham TA*. Nature Communications (2017), 8(1) 1998. PMID: 29222441

Major Funding
  • 2018-2023- NIH, Arizona Centre for Cancer Evolution (ACE) Cancer Systems Biology Centre, direct funding of ~$800k of $8M total
  • 2017-2022- Wellcome Trust, Evolutionary predictions in colorectal cancer (EPICC), ~£1.3m
  • 2015-2021- Cancer Research UK, Career Development Award: Quantification of human colorectal cancer evolution: initiation, progression, metastasis and response to treatment, £1M
Other Activities
  • Faculty of gastrointestinal cancer section of  F1000.com
  • Evolution lead for the colorectal cancer domain (GeCIP) of Genomics England
  • Member of Critical Gaps in Bowel Cancer Research working group
Themes/Keywords
Cancer Prevention & Risk Reduction Genetics & Evolution of Cancer Bioinformatics Cancer Evolution and Genomics Colorectal Centre for Tumour Biology
Research

The central themes of my lab are:

  1. Characterising intra-tumour heterogeneity and using it to predict prognosis
  2. Understanding and predicting the evolution of premalignant disease.
  3. Understanding how the clonal structure of tissues (particularly in the GI tract) shape patterns of somatic evolution.

The major tools of the lab are genomics, bioinformatics, histopathology and mathematical modelling.

Other Activities
  • Faculty of gastrointestinal cancer section of  F1000.com
  • Evolution lead for the colorectal cancer domain (GeCIP) of Genomics England
  • Member of Critical Gaps in Bowel Cancer Research working group
Major Funding
  • 2018-2023- NIH, Arizona Centre for Cancer Evolution (ACE) Cancer Systems Biology Centre, direct funding of ~$800k of $8M total
  • 2018-2021- Cancer Research UK, Early detection of colorectal cancer risk in patients with inflammatory bowel disease ~£0.5M
  • 2017-2019- Bowel and Cancer Research, The epigenetic basis of exceptional survival in metastatic colon cancer, £50k
  • 2017-2022- Wellcome Trust, Evolutionary predictions in colorectal cancer (EPICC), ~£1.3m
  • 2015-2018- Barts Charity, Large Project Grant: Derivation of evolutionary biomarkers for cancer risk prediction in Ulcerative Colitis, £465k
  • 2015-2021- Cancer Research UK, Career Development Award: Quantification of human colorectal cancer evolution: initiation, progression, metastasis and response to treatment, £1M
Recent Publications

Resolving genetic heterogeneity in cancer. Turajlic S, Sottoriva A, Graham T et al. Nat Rev Genet (2019) 20(1) 404-416
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30918367

Spatially constrained tumour growth affects the patterns of clonal selection and neutral drift in cancer genomic data. Chkhaidze K, Heide T, Werner B et al. PLoS Comput Biol (2019) 15(2) e1007243
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31356595

Measuring the distribution of fitness effects in somatic evolution by combining clonal dynamics with dN/dS ratios Williams M, Zapata L, Werner B et al. (2019) (18)

Correction: Genomic profiling reveals spatial intra-tumor heterogeneity in follicular lymphoma. Araf S, Wang J, Korfi K et al. Leukemia (2019) 33(2) 1540
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30903015

Evolutionary history of human colitis-associated colorectal cancer. Baker A-M, Cross W, Curtius K et al. Gut (2019) 68(2) 985-995
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29991641

Multiregion human bladder cancer sequencing reveals tumour evolution, bladder cancer phenotypes and implications for targeted therapy. Heide T, Maurer A, Eipel M et al. J Pathol (2019) 248(2) 230-242
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30719704

NeoPredPipe: high-throughput neoantigen prediction and recognition potential pipeline. Schenck RO, Lakatos E, Gatenbee C et al. BMC Bioinformatics (2019) 20(2) 264
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31117948

Quantification of Crypt and Stem Cell Evolution in the Normal and Neoplastic Human Colon. Baker A-M, Cereser B, Melton S et al. Cell Rep (2019) 27(1) 2524-2524
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31116993

Measuring Clonal Evolution in Cancer with Genomics. Williams MJ, Sottoriva A, Graham TA Annu Rev Genomics Hum Genet (2019) (1)
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31059289

Niche engineering drives early passage through an immune bottleneck in progression to colorectal cancer Gatenbee C, Baker A-M, Schenck R et al. (2019) (18)

For additional publications, please click here
Team

Postdoctoral Researchers in this group
Dr William Cross, Dr Marc Williams, Dr Eszter Lakatos, Dr Annie Baker, Dr Maximilian Mossner

PhD Students
Freddie Whiting, Jacob Househam, Calum Gabbutt

Clinical Research Fellows
Anisha Sukha, Ibrahim Al Bakir, Alison Berner

Biography

I originally trained as a mathematician (MSci Mathematics, Imperial College, 2002) before spending time in a cancer genetics lab as part of my interdisciplinary PhD (PhD Mathematical Biology, UCL, 2009). As a postdoc, I worked in Nick Wright's lab at the Cancer Research UK London Research Institute studying clonal expansions in human tissues (2008-2011), and Carlo Maley’s lab at UCSF looking at the pattern of clonal evolution in human cancers (2011-2013).

I joined BCI in September 2013.

Please contact me to discuss opportunities. Further information about my lab can be found here.

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