About us
The major impact of PROMINENT will be to facilitate the identification of the causative lifestyle and environmental factors that promote cancer. This will be based on a deeper understanding of the process of initiated cell selection by tumor-promoting agents, and it will provide pathways to new methods and global approaches to cancer prevention for the wider population, including those most at risk.
Program Overview
PROMINENT has assembled an international, multidisciplinary team of investigators from 8 institutions in 5 countries with complementary and excellent expertise.
The team will employ cutting-edge high-throughput genomic, proteomic, and functional methods to explore the role of known and novel risk factors in the promotion of tumor development and understand the precise mechanisms by which these promoting factors stimulate the conversion of normal cells to cancer.
Our patient advocate team will work closely with the scientific team to translate and disseminate findings from PROMINENT objectives to the general public.
The work of PROMINENT builds upon decades of research by the team members, as well as substantial previous research support from both CRUK and NCI.
Meet the team
Paul Brennan
Paul Brennan is the head of the Genomic Epidemiology at the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC). IARC is the cancer research Agency of the WHO. The main focus of his work is to use genomics and epidemiology to (i) better understand causes of cancer, and (ii) allow us to detect cancer at earlier stages. The epidemiological studies that they conduct involve both cohort and case-control and involve partners in central and eastern Europe, central and south-east Asia, and Latin America. He has a particular focus on trying to understand causes of esophageal cancer (with a focus in North East Iran), as well as renal and pancreas cancer (in central Europe), and head and neck cancers (in Latin America). He is supported by a variety of funders, in particular the CRUK/NCI Grand Challenge, the European Commission Horizon funding programmes, and the US National Cancer Institute.
Allan Balmain
Allan Balmain was born in Wick, Scotland and studied Organic Chemistry at the University of Glasgow before being awarded Fellowships from both the Royal Society and Alexander von Humbolt-Stiftung to undertake research in France and Germany to identify the underlying mechanism of action of tumour promoters. Allan further developed this research as a Principal Investigator at the Beatson Institute in Glasgow before joining the Helen Diller Comprehensive Cancer Center at UCSF. Professor Balmain was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1995, Fellow of the Royal Society in 2015 and Fellow of the Academy of the American Association for Cancer Research. Allan Balmain has used the mouse as a model system for unraveling the complexity of cancer at the genetic, molecular and cellular levels. His laboratory first established the molecular link between cancer initiation and carcinogen exposure and identified specific genetic events leading to malignant progression, further strengthening our understanding of cancer susceptibility. A major goal of the Balmain lab is to use mouse models of cancer to identify the genetic and environmental factors that influence cancer susceptibility in multiple tissues. The wide-ranging research undertaken within the lab has generated novel multidimensional data sets for visualizing the genetic architecture of cancer pathways, and for identifying the complex gene network interactions which underlie individual cancer susceptibility.
Marc Gunter
Dr Gunter is Professor and Chair in Cancer Epidemiology and Prevention in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the School of Public Health, Imperial College London and co-directs the Cancer Epidemiology and Prevention Research Unit based at Imperial College and the Institute of Cancer Research. He previously headed the Nutrition and Metabolism Branch at the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC). He is a molecular epidemiologist and his main research focus is the role of nutrition, diabetes, and obesity in cancer development and prognosis, with an emphasis on studying the mechanisms linking metabolic dysfunction and endocrine pathways with cancer. Marc serves as joint coordinator of the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer (EPIC) and currently leads a number of large-scale multi-disciplinary projects focused on cancer etiology and prevention that employ molecular approaches within prospective cohorts and intervention studies.
Emma Lundberg
Dr. Lundberg is Associate Professor of Bioengineering and Pathology at Stanford University, and Director of the Cell Atlas, of the Human Protein Atlas program. In the interface between bioimaging, proteomics and artificial intelligence her research aims to define the spatiotemporal subcellular architecture of the human proteome, to understand how variations in protein expression patterns contribute to cellular function and disease, with particular focus on cell division and metabolism
Nuria Lopez-Bigas
Nuria Lopez-Bigas is a biologist with a PhD in molecular genetics of deafness. She transitioned into bioinformatics during her postdoc at the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI). Since 2006, she leads a research group in Barcelona focused on the study of cancer from a genomics perspective. Her lab has done important contributions in the identification of cancer genes and driver mutations across cancer types, in the interpretation of tumor genomes for precision cancer medicine, in the discovery of the variation of mutation rate along the genome, in the identification of mutational signatures of cancer treatment and in the identification of genes involved in clonal hematopoiesis.
Christopher Counter
The Counter laboratory studies the molecular underpinning of early tumorigenesis. His laboratory is housed in the Department of Pharmacology & Cancer Biology, and is part of the Duke Cancer Institute in the Duke School of Medicine.
Luke Gilbert
Luke Gilbert is an Associate Professor at UCSF and a Core Investigator at the Arc Institute. Dr. Gilbert was an early pioneer in repurposed CRISPR systems that are used to turn genes on (CRISPRa) and off (CRISPRi). More recently, the Gilbert lab has developed new strategies for editing heritable epigenetic memories (CRISPRoff/on) and for systematically mapping human genetic interactions at very large scales or at single cell resolution. Translationally, the Gilbert lab is focusing on using CRISPR functional genomics expertise to tackle big problems in cancer biology.
Calvin Kuo
Dr. Calvin Kuo MD, PhD is the Maureen Lyles D’Ambrogio Professor of Medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine. His research interests include modeling of cancer, immunity and pathogens in 3D organoid cultures, biology of intestinal and lung stem cell populations, and molecular regulation of angiogenesis and the blood-brain barrier. He is an elected member of the Association of American Physicians, American Society for Clinical Investigation and AAAS. Calvin is a founder of several biotechnology companies and serves on numerous foundation boards.
Kim Rhoads
Kim Rhoads, M.D., M.S., MPH is associate director of community outreach and engagement at VCU Massey Comprehensive Cancer Center. She also serves as a professor of colorectal surgery in the VCU School of Medicine. Rhoads most recently served as the associate director for community outreach and engagement at the Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center at University of California, San Francisco.
Rhoads training and scholarly work include basic research on endothelial cell regulation and angiogenesis, environmental exposure science, cancer risk reduction, and clinical care as a colorectal surgeon. She has translated her knowledge of systems through health services research to inform health policy. Before joining the faculty at VCU Massey, Rhoads founded the COE program for the Stanford Cancer Institute and was the first Associate Director for the UCSF Helen Diller Comprehensive Cancer Center.
Rhoads holds leadership roles in community engagement and involvement, nationally as an MPI for NIMHD’s Health Excellence Action Network (HEAN), a consortium of 11 research centers intervening to eliminate disparities in multiple chronic diseases.
Rhoads also has formal training and certification in community organizing from the Center for Third World Organizing in Oakland, California; and community-based participatory research training as a member of the first cohort of academic-community partnership teams trained by the California Breast Cancer Research Program in 2011.
Rhoads holds a bachelor’s and a master’s degree from the University of California, Berkeley. She received her MD from University of California, San Francisco, where she also completed general surgery residency, winning awards for research and compassionate care delivery. Rhoads also earned an MPH from Harvard School of Public Health in healthcare policy and management and subsequently completed a clinical fellowship in colon and rectal surgery at UCSF, where she also served as the inaugural Philip R. Lee Fellow in Health Policy at UCSF.
| Title | Address | Description |
|---|---|---|
Brennan’s team | 25 Av. Tony Garnier, 69007 Lyon, France | Genomic Epidemiology Branch International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC/WHO) |
Brennan’s team | Helen Diller Family Cancer Research Bldg, 1450 3rd St, San Francisco, CA 94158, USA | Balmain Lab UCSF |
Gunter’s team | South Kensington, London SW7 2AZ, UK | Cancer Epidemiology and Prevention Research Unit, School of Public Health Imperial College London (ICL) |
Lundberg’s team | Shriram Center for Bioengineering and Chemical Engineering, 443 Via Ortega, Stanford, CA 94305, USA | Lundberg Lab Stanford |
Lundberg’s team | Tomtebodavägen 23a, 171 65 Solna, Sweden | Mats Nilsson’s lab – In situ sequencing and molecular diagnostics |
Lundberg’s team | Brinellvägen 8, 114 28 Stockholm, Sweden | |
Lopez-Bigas’ team | Carrer de Baldiri Reixac, 10, Les Corts, 08028 Barcelona, Spain | Barcelona Biomedical Genomics Lab Institute for Research Biomedicine (IRB) |
Counter’s team | 40 Duke Medicine Cir #124, Durham, NC 27710, USA | Counter Lab Department of Pharmacology and Cancer Biology Duke University |
Gilbert’s team | 505 Parnassus Ave, San Francisco, CA 94143, USA | Gilbert Lab UCSF |
Kuo’s team | 265 Campus Drive, Palo Alto, CA 94305, USA | Calvin Kuo Laboratory at Stanford |
