Tissue Damage and Tumor Initiation
This project investigates how tissue damage influences the progression from pre-neoplasia to neoplasia, particularly in organs exposed to environmental stress like the intestine. Although oncogenic mutations are common in normal tissues, they rarely lead to cancer without additional triggers. We use transgenic mice to study how mutations in oncogenic drivers affect the behavior of intestinal cells during regeneration after tissue damage. A novel lineage tracing system tied to a damage reporter allows tracking of stem cells activated during regeneration. The goal is to define how damage-induced cell states interact with mutations to promote tumor initiation.
Multiplexed immunofluorescence image of a mouse colon carrying a mosaic oncogenic mutation to delineate the immune microenvironment associated with the different neighborhoods of epithelium. Image was generated by Bing Shui.