Monica J. Justice (Editor-in-Chief)
Monica Justice is Program Head and Senior Scientist at SickKids (The Hospital for Sick Children) in Toronto. Her research aims to merge mouse modeling with clinical genetics to understand the basis for many human diseases, and to use these mouse models to ameliorate disease states.
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Areas of expertise: mouse models of disease, defects in vasculogenesis and hematopoiesis, lymphoid leukemias and lymphomas, Rett syndrome, forward genetics, sequencing.
Ross Cagan (Senior Editor)
Ross Cagan is Associate Dean of the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York. Dr Cagan was previously Professor at Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis, where he developed a vibrant research program focusing on the mechanisms and molecules involved in cell patterning. His group focuses on a genetic and drug screening approach using the fruit fly Drosophila that targets primarily cancer and diabetes.
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Areas of expertise: Drosophila, cancer, diabetes, eye development, retina, drug screening, apoptosis.
Monitoring Editors
Steven J. Clapcote
Steve Clapcote is a lecturer in Pharmacology in the School of Biomedical Sciences at the University of Leeds, UK. His research uses mouse and human molecular genetics to investigate mechanisms of human neurological diseases, with the aim of identifying new targets for therapeutic intervention. One recent aspect of the group’s work is to look at the function of the Na+,K+-ATPase alpha3 subunit, which has been implicated in a wide range of neurological conditions, including Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. He has acted as a reviewer for PNAS, Journal of Neuroscience, Molecular Psychiatry, and Human Molecular Genetics.
Areas of expertise: mouse genetics, mouse behaviour, disorders of the CNS (neurological, psychiatric, neurodevelopmental, neurodegenerative and movement disorders).
Pamela Hoodless
Pamela Hoodless is a Distinguished Scientist at the BC Cancer Agency and Professor in the Department of Medical Genetics at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. Her research combines mouse models and genomics to understand how transcriptional regulatory mechanisms control differentiation and cell identity, with a particular focus on hepatocyte differentiation and heart valve formation. This work is applied to exploring how these mechanisms contribute to cancer progression.
Areas of expertise: mouse models, genomics, development, cancer, stem cells.
Tatsushi Igaki
Tatsushi Igaki is a Professor of the Graduate School of Biostudies at Kyoto University, Japan. His research uses Drosophila genetics to understand the cell-cell communications that govern tissue growth and homeostasis. In particular, his group focuses on the molecular basis of epithelial cell-cell cooperation and competition during normal development and cancer.
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Areas of expertise: Drosophila models, cancer, genetics.
Elaine R. Mardis
Elaine Mardis graduated from the University of Oklahoma with a B.S. in zoology and completed her PhD in Chemistry and Biochemistry in 1989, also at Oklahoma. Dr. Mardis was a senior research scientist for four years at BioRad Laboratories. She joined the faculty at Washington University School of Medicine in 1993, served as Co-director of the McDonnell Genome Institute since 2002, and was named the Robert E. and Louise F. Dunn Distinguished Professor of Medicine in 2014. In September 2016, she became the co-Executive Director of the Institute for Genomic Medicine at Nationwide Children’s Hospital and Professor of Pediatrics at the Ohio State University College of Medicine. Her research interests focus on the application of next-generation sequencing to characterize cancer genomes and transcriptomes, and to support therapeutic decision-making. Her translational research efforts devise sequencing-based diagnostics, decision-support tools and databases, and the use of genomics to design personalized cancer vaccines.
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Areas of expertise: cancer genomics, transcriptomes, leukemia, next-generation sequencing, whole-genome sequencing in clinic, mouse models of human cancer, cancer cell line encylopedia screening, complex human disease models such as diabetes.
E. Elizabeth Patton
Liz Patton is a Reader and MRC Programme Leader Scientist at the MRC Institute of Genetics and Molecular Medicine, University of Edinburgh, UK. Dr Patton received a BSc Honours degree from King’s College at Dalhousie University, and a PhD from the University of Toronto, working with Mike Tyers to discover how E3 ubiquitin ligases control cell division. Following this, Liz received a Human Frontier Science Programme Postdoctoral Fellowship to work with Len Zon at Harvard Medical School, where she developed a zebrafish model for melanoma. Her lab uses chemical genetic approaches in zebrafish to investigate the basis for melanocyte development, as well as melanoma biology. Liz serves as an Editorial Board member for Pigment Cell and Melanoma Research (Wiley). Dr Patton was the founding President of the Zebrafish Disease Models Society (2013-2015) and currently serves as a Board member, and is an elected member of the Young Academy of Scotland at the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and the European Society of Pigment Cell Research.
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Areas of expertise: melanocyte development, neural crest, melanoma (skin cancer), chemical genetics approaches, zebrafish.
Owen Sansom
Owen Sansom is Deputy Director of the Beatson Institute for Cancer Research in Glasgow, UK. His lab investigates two types of epithelial tumor, colorectal and pancreatic cancers, which are the second and fifth most common causes of cancer death worldwide, respectively. Recent sequencing studies have highlighted the common mutational drivers of these cancers and the focus of Dr Sansom’s group is to model these within the mouse to identify novel markers of the disease, as well as targets for therapy. Over the past five years, his work has defined potential new therapeutic targets for colorectal cancers lacking Apc and for resectable pancreatic cancer. Dr Sansom is on the advisory board of the MRC Unit of Toxicology in Leicester, UK and serves on the CRUK Discovery committee.
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Areas of expertise: epithelial cancers, pancreatic, colorectal, mouse models, APC tumor suppressor, intestinal cancer.
David M. Tobin
David Tobin works in the Departments of Molecular Genetics, and Microbiology and Immunology at the Duke University School of Medicine. His research focuses largely on tuberculosis, innate immunity, mycobacterial pathogenesis and the host response to mycobacterial infection. Using a zebrafish model, his laboratory has identified new host susceptibility loci for mycobacterial infection and has translated these findings into human cohorts. Dr Tobin is an editorial board member on PLoS ONE.
Areas of expertise: zebrafish, genetics, immunology, microbiology, virology.
George Tidmarsh (Consulting Editor)
George Tidmarsh has been the Chief Executive Officer, President and Secretary of La Jolla Pharmaceutical Co. since January 2012 and serves as its Principal Accounting Officer. He has more than 22 years of entrepreneurial and executive experience in Biotechnology, including the successful clinical development of three FDA-approved drugs. He serves as Consulting Professor of Pediatrics and Neonatology at Stanford University School of Medicine.
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Areas of expertise: preclinical drug testing, clinical trials, drug efficacy and side effects.