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

Author Correction: The effects of mutational processes and selection on driver mutations across cancer types (Nature Communications, (2018), 9, 1, (1857), 10.1038/s41467-018-04208-6) Temko D, Tomlinson IPM, Severini S et al. Nature Communications (2020) 11(7)

Measuring single cell divisions in human tissues from multi-region sequencing data Werner B, Case J, Williams MJ et al. Nature Communications (2020) 11(7)

Genetic heterogeneity highlighted by differential FDG-PET response in diffuse large B-cell lymphoma Araf S, Korfi K, Bewicke-Copley F et al. Haematologica (2020) 105(7) E318-E321

Cancer associated fibroblast FAK regulates malignant cell metabolism. Demircioglu F, Wang J, Candido J et al. Nature Communications (2020) 11(1) 1290-1290
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32157087

A novel use of random priming-based single-strand library preparation for whole genome sequencing of formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded tissue samples. Saunderson EA, Baker A-M, Williams M et al. Nar Genomics and Bioinformatics (2020) 2(1) lqz017-lqz017
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31867579

Measuring the distribution of fitness effects in somatic evolution by combining clonal dynamics with dN/dS ratios Williams MJ, Zapata L, Werner B et al. eLife (2020) 9(7)

Author Correction: Resolving genetic heterogeneity in cancer (Nature Reviews Genetics, (2019), 20, 7, (404-416), 10.1038/s41576-019-0114-6) Turajlic S, Sottoriva A, Graham T et al. Nature Reviews Genetics (2020) 21(7) 65

Concurrent in situ analysis of point mutations and immune infiltrate in FFPE cancers Baker AM, Graham TA (2020) 636(7) 287-297

In Situ Point Mutation Detection in FFPE Colorectal Cancers Using the BaseScope Assay Baker AM, Graham TA (2020) 2148(7) 349-360

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

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.