Tony did his PhD at the and postdoctoral work at in Cambridge and . His research group at the Gurdon Institute is focused on epigenetic modifications and their involvement in cancer.
Research & Activities
Epigenetic modifications and cancer Do enzymes that modify chromatin and RNA offer therapeutic targets? DNA exists in the cell nucleus wrapped around histone proteins to form chromatin. The DNA and histones are decorated with many types of covalent chemical modifications, which can affect transcription and other cellular processes. In addition, non-coding RNAs that regulate chromatin function can be similarly chemically modified. Our lab is involved in characterising the pathways that mediate and control DNA, RNA and histone modifications. We try to understand the cellular processes they regulate, their mechanism of action and their involvement in cancer. Our focus at the moment is modifications of messenger RNA and non-coding RNA. There are very few modifications identified on these low-abundance RNAs, unlike on transfer RNA and ribosomal RNA, where there are many. We have been developing sensitive technologies to detect modifications, such as specific antibodies, chemical reactivity assays and mass spectrometry. Using these, we have been able to detect a number of novel modifications on mRNA and microRNA and have shown that these function to regulate mRNA translation and microRNA processing. Furthermore, we have shown that the enzymes that mediate these modifications are implicated in acute myeloid leukaemia. Tony Kouzarides is Professor of Cancer Biology at the University of Cambridge and a group leader at the . He currently holds the following directorships: Director and Co-founder of the , director of and director of . Tony is founder/director of , an organization for the promotion of science at the University of Cambridge. He is founder, patron and ex-director of a cancer charity in Spain called Conquer Cancer. He is on the Scientific Advisory Board of the and on the Executive Board of the . Tony is a co-founder and ex-director of , a publicly trading research reagents company in Cambridge, a co-founder and ex-director of Chroma Therapeutics, of a drug discovery company based in Oxford and a co-founder and current director of , a drug discovery company based in Cambridge.
Awards & Prizes
Kouzarides has been elected member of the , Fellow of the , , Fellow of the and is a Cancer Research UK Gibb Fellow. He has been awarded the , the , the , the , the Novartis Medal and Prize and the .
