Will Beckman

The role of cell-cell transcription variability on endocrine resistance development

Will Beckman MSc


Early Stage Researcher 3
Name: Will Beckman
Gender: Male
Country of Birth: United Kingdom
MSc in: Systems and Synthetic Biology (Imperial College London, UK)

 

Marie Skłodowska Curie PhD Fellowship in Cell Biology and Synthetic Systems Biology, at the University of Amsterdam (UvA), the Netherlands, Swammerdam Institute for Life Sciences (SILS), in the research group of Dr Verschure, the EpiPredict Project Coordinator.

Project title: “The role of cell-cell transcription variability on endocrine resistance development”

Supervisors: PI: Dr Verschure (SILS, UvA), EpiPredict co-PI: Dr Olek Epiontis)

PhD programme: Swammerdam Inst. for Life Sciences SILS, UvA (www.sils.uva.nl); Netherlands Bioinformatics and Systems Biology Research School (www.biosb.nl) or Oncology Graduate School Amsterdam (www.ooa-graduateschool.org)

Key Objectives & Expected Results

Objectives

  • To characterize transcript cell-cell variability in patient samples/resistance-induced clones
  • To compare genome-wide and single cell transcript profiles for selected genes
  • To test model predictions of resistance development related to cell type selection/adaptation

Expected Results

  • Quantification of RNA FISH single cell transcript levels in breast cancer sample and resistant clones
  • Role of cell selection vs. adaptation of resistance-induced ERa related pathways

Host training: Single molecule RNA FISH, high resolution microscopy, probe design, labelling, purification

Planned secondment(s): ICL: Patient tissue/epigenetic profiling (M9), ETH: Inducible gene rewiring (M17-19), Epiontis: DNA methylation kit development (M29-30)