Sir Michael Stratton | |
---|---|
Born | Michael Rudolf Stratton 22 June 1957 [1] |
Education | Haberdashers' Aske's Boys' School |
Alma mater | University of Oxford (BM BCh) University of London (PhD) [2] |
Known for | |
Spouse | Judith Breuer (m. 1981) |
Awards |
Royal Medal (2024) |
Scientific career | |
Institutions | Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute Institute of Cancer Research Guy's Hospital University of Oxford [1] |
Thesis | Role of genetic alterations in the genesis of human soft tissue tumours and medulloblastoma (1990) |
Doctoral students | Nazneen Rahman [5] [6] [7] [8] Ludmil Alexandrov [9] |
Website | sanger |
Sir Michael Rudolf Stratton (born 22 June 1957) is a British clinical scientist and the third director of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute. He currently heads the Cancer Genome Project and is a leader of the International Cancer Genome Consortium. [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19]
Stratton was educated at the independent Haberdashers' Aske's Boys' School and obtained a Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery degree from the University of Oxford where he was a student of Brasenose College, Oxford. He completed his clinical training at Guy's Hospital before training as a histopathologist at the Hammersmith and Maudsley Hospitals in London.[ citation needed ] He obtained a PhD while working on Medulloblastomas [2] in the molecular biology of cancer at the Institute of Cancer Research, awarded by the University of London in 1990. [2]
Stratton has held clinical posts at Guy's Hospital, Westminster Hospital, Hammersmith Hospital and the Royal Marsden Hospital. [1] He took up a Faculty appointment and now holds a Professorship at the Institute of Cancer Research. He joined the Sanger Institute in 2000 and was promoted to deputy director in 2007. In May 2010, he was appointed director, succeeding Allan Bradley. [20]
Stratton's research interests [21] are in the area of genetics of cancer. In 1994, he assembled a research group that localised BRCA2, [22] [23] [24] [25] [26] a major breast cancer susceptibility gene that repairs chromosomal damage, to chromosome 13. [27] The following year his team identified the gene and, in doing so generated a megabase segment of high-quality human genome sequence. [28] [29] His subsequent work has involved the identification of more moderate cancer susceptibility genes such as CHEK2, [30] ATM [31] and PALB2 [32] each of which play a role in some breast cancers. He has additionally identified genes implicated in the development of skin, testis, colorectal and thyroid cancers, Wilms tumour and Peutz–Jeghers syndrome. [33]
At the announcement of the completion of the Human Genome Project in 2000, Stratton discussed using genome sequences to revolutionise cancer treatment. [29] He and Andy Futreal had already initiated the Cancer Genome Project at the Sanger Centre, as it was then known, to use genome-wide analysis to find somatic mutations in human cancers. [34] According to fellow cancer researcher Chris Marshall, doing so prior to the completion of the human genome sequence was an "audacious idea." [35] The aims of the project are to identify new cancer genes, to understand how cancers develop and to study how the structure of genomes influence cancer. In 2002 and 2004, Stratton's team discovered mutations in the BRAF [36] and ERBB2 [37] genes in approximately 60 per cent of malignant melanomas and 4 per cent of non-small-cell lung cancers respectively. [33]
In 2009, Stratton and colleagues reported the first complete cancer genomes, from a lung tumour and a melanoma. [29] [38] They also analysed the genomes from 24 different breast tumours and found a diversity of DNA abnormalities, indicating that cancers can be divided in more subcategories than previously thought. [38] [39] Stratton's team maintain the Catalogue of Somatic Mutations in Cancer (COSMIC) database, a set of online resources available to the scientific community. [40] He is also one of the lead researchers in the International Cancer Genome Project, a £600 million, multi-national project to sequence 25 000 cancer genomes, from 50 different types of cancer. [33] Stratton's research has been funded by the Wellcome Trust and the Medical Research Council (MRC). [41]
In August 2018 it was reported that an investigation was under way into allegations of bullying of staff and gender discrimination made against senior management of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, including Stratton. [42] The independent investigation, carried out by the barrister Thomas Kibling from Matrix Chambers, concluded in October 2018 and cleared Stratton of any wrongdoing.[ citation needed ] The public report stated that the allegation of bullying was "misplaced, unwarranted and misconceived", while also listing areas for improvement in the workings of the Sanger Institute. [43] [44] Some of the claimants disputed these findings. [45]
Stratton was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences (FMedSci) in 1999, elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2008, elected to EMBO Membership in 2009 [3] and was awarded the Lila Gruber Cancer Research Award in 2010. He was knighted in the 2013 Birthday Honours for services to medical science. [46] [47] His nomination for the Royal Society reads:
Michael Stratton is distinguished for his contributions to the genetics of human cancer. Using genetic linkage studies and positional cloning, he mapped and isolated the breast cancer susceptibility gene BRCA2 and subsequently other cancer predisposition genes: CYLD and STK11. To provide a new approach to find cancer genes he promoted the notion of large scale systematic searches of the human genome for somatic mutations in cancer and initiated the Cancer Genome Project leading to the discovery of BRAF as a melanoma gene. His work has important implications for the understanding of the genetic mechanisms underlying cancer, diagnosis and therapy. [48]
In May 2022, Stratton was awarded the inaugural 'In Search of Wonder Lifetime Achievement Award' at the Cambridge Independent's Science and Technology Awards, sponsored by Waterbeach creative design agency JDJ Creative. [49] He received the award at a ceremony held at the Wellcome Genome Campus, just three months after announcing his decision to step down as director of the Wellcome Sanger Institute and CEO of the Wellcome Genome Campus after 12 years in the post. [50] In 2024 he received the Royal Medal of the Royal Society. [51]
Breast cancer type 1 susceptibility protein is a protein that in humans is encoded by the BRCA1 gene. Orthologs are common in other vertebrate species, whereas invertebrate genomes may encode a more distantly related gene. BRCA1 is a human tumor suppressor gene and is responsible for repairing DNA.
The Institute of Cancer Research is a public research institute and a member institution of the University of London in London, United Kingdom, specialising in oncology. It was founded in 1909 as a research department of the Royal Marsden Hospital and joined the University of London in 2003. It has been responsible for a number of breakthrough discoveries, including that the basic cause of cancer is damage to DNA.
BRCA2 and BRCA2 are human genes and their protein products, respectively. The official symbol and the official name are maintained by the HUGO Gene Nomenclature Committee. One alternative symbol, FANCD1, recognizes its association with the FANC protein complex. Orthologs, styled Brca2 and Brca2, are common in other vertebrate species. BRCA2 is a human tumor suppressor gene, found in all humans; its protein, also called by the synonym breast cancer type 2 susceptibility protein, is responsible for repairing DNA.
The Wellcome Sanger Institute, previously known as The Sanger Centre and Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, is a non-profit British genomics and genetics research institute, primarily funded by the Wellcome Trust.
Oncogenomics is a sub-field of genomics that characterizes cancer-associated genes. It focuses on genomic, epigenomic and transcript alterations in cancer.
CHEK2 is a tumor suppressor gene that encodes the protein CHK2, a serine-threonine kinase. CHK2 is involved in DNA repair, cell cycle arrest or apoptosis in response to DNA damage. Mutations to the CHEK2 gene have been linked to a wide range of cancers.
Serine/threonine kinase 11 (STK11) also known as liver kinase B1 (LKB1) or renal carcinoma antigen NY-REN-19 is a protein kinase that in humans is encoded by the STK11 gene.
The CYLD lysine 63 deubiquitinase gene, also termed the CYLD gene, CYLD is an evolutionary ancient gene found to be present as far back on the evolutionary scale as in sponges. In humans, this gene is located in band 12.1 on the long arm of chromosome 16 and is known to code multiple proteins through the process of alternative splicing.
RAD51 homolog C , also known as RAD51C, is a protein which in humans is encoded by the RAD51C gene.
26S proteasome complex subunit DSS1 is a protein that in humans is encoded by the SHFM1 gene.
Partner and localizer of BRCA2, also known as PALB2 or FANCN, is a protein which in humans is encoded by the PALB2 gene.
TOX high mobility group box family member 3, also known as TOX3, is a human gene.
Alan Ashworth, FRS is a British molecular biologist, noted for his work on genes involved in cancer susceptibility. He is currently the President of the UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of California, San Francisco, a multidisciplinary research and clinical care organisation that is one of the largest cancer centres in the Western United States. He was previously CEO of the Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) in London.
Cancer genome sequencing is the whole genome sequencing of a single, homogeneous or heterogeneous group of cancer cells. It is a biochemical laboratory method for the characterization and identification of the DNA or RNA sequences of cancer cell(s).
COSMIC is an online database of somatically acquired mutations found in human cancer. Somatic mutations are those that occur in non-germline cells that are not inherited by children. COSMIC, an acronym of Catalogue Of Somatic Mutations In Cancer, curates data from papers in the scientific literature and large scale experimental screens from the Cancer Genome Project at the Sanger Institute. The database is freely available to academic researchers and commercially licensed to others.
Sir Bruce Anthony John Ponder FMedSci FAACR FRS FRCP is an English geneticist and cancer researcher. He is Emeritus Professor of Oncology at the University of Cambridge and former director of the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute and of the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Cancer Centre.
Ashok Venkitaraman is a British cancer researcher of Indian origin. He is the Director of the Cancer Science Institute of Singapore, a Distinguished Professor of Medicine at the National University of Singapore, and Program Director at A*STAR, Singapore. From 1998 to 2020, he was the inaugural holder of the Ursula Zoellner Professorship of Cancer Research at the University of Cambridge, a Professorial Fellow at Pembroke College, Cambridge, and from 2006 to 2019, was the Director of the Medical Research Council Cancer Unit.
Sabera Nazneen Rahman is a geneticist who specialises in cancer research and is a non-executive director for AstraZeneca. She was previously head of Genetics and Epidemiology at the Institute of Cancer Research.
Mutational signatures are characteristic combinations of mutation types arising from specific mutagenesis processes such as DNA replication infidelity, exogenous and endogenous genotoxin exposures, defective DNA repair pathways, and DNA enzymatic editing.
Jórunn Erla Eyfjörð is an Icelandic molecular biologist and professor emerita at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Iceland. She is known for her research on breast cancer genetics.