Dr Paul Reynolds

Dr Paul Reynolds

Lecturer

Researcher profile

Phone
+44 (0)1334 46 3555
Email
par10@st-andrews.ac.uk

 

Research areas

Systems Pathology and Cancer

Why do some patients respond to therapy and some don’t? There is a growing need to personalise therapeutic treatments because human diseases are somewhat unique to the individual patient. Diagnostic assays detecting specific features (biomarkers) of a disease provide a framework to classify diseases according to their underlying molecular defects. In turn, the patient-specific molecular profile guides the clinician’s choice for therapy. Cancer is a remarkably heterogeneous disease and the increasing complexity of molecular changes that occur during tumour evolution highlights the importance of identifying events that drive this process. In pregnancy, cells from the fetus invade maternal tissue and this process has many similarities to how cancer spreads. During pregnancy, fetal placental trophoblast cells invade the maternal uterine decidua without being rejected by the maternal immune system - the pregnancy paradox. The maternal decidua harbours multiple populations of maternal immune cells, all of which extensively interact with the fetal trophoblasts. Up to 40% of decidual cells are leukocytes, and accumulating evidence suggests that fetal immune tolerance is established locally at the placenta to counteract these maternal immune cells. The immune system also restrains the growth of many early cancer lesions by the process of immune surveillance, where lesions are detected and removed. However, cancers that develop further into clinical disease escape immune surveillance and it is increasingly appreciated that overcoming immune surveillance is a critical acquired attribute of tumourigenesis.

The Reynolds lab is interested in identifying those molecular changes which drive disease with particular emphasis on 1) factors that mediate tumour invasion and 2) factors that mediate placental invasion. We are employing biochemistry, molecular biology and cell biology approaches to investigate the nature and context of these factors and how they impact upon human health.

PhD supervision

  • Jessie Woon

Selected publications

 

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