Research

The Lau Laboratory investigates pathways that can be modulated to prevent malignant transformation or treat cancers that arise in patients with cancer predisposition syndromes. One focus of the lab is to study premalignant and malignant tissue from patients with DNA damage repair defects  (e.g. Fanconi Anemia) and determine whether the mutations in these patients result in new protein coding sequences, called neoantigens, which can be recognized as "foreign" by the patient's immune system.  Certain neoantigen profiles can predict response to therapies that work by unleashing the patient's own immune system to attack their tumor (immunotherapies).  We are using gene editing as well as mouse models to study these cancer predisposition syndromes and how their tumors respond to immunotherapies.