Debbie Caswell

We are seeking a motivated postdoctoral fellow to investigate mechanisms of DNA damage response, APOBEC-mediated mutagenesis, innate immunity, and double-stranded RNA sensing. Located in Southern California, UCI offers an outstanding scientific environment and exceptional quality of life.

The 2025 generation - Nature Cancer Twelve early-career researchers who started their independent research groups in 2025 reflect on their experiences from this first year of the journey, describe the opportunities they have had and the...

Honoured to have been included in @natcancer.nature.com's 2025 generation:
www.nature.com/articles/s43...

I chatted with @philiprlang.bsky.social on his podcast about how a virus might be involved in bladder cancer. Since "Phil Lang is Not a Scientist", we made this really accessible. If you're interested in how small sneaky DNA viruses might contribute to the origins of cancers, give it a listen.

UCL – University College London UCL is consistently ranked as one of the top ten universities in the world (QS World University Rankings 2010-2022) and is No.2 in the UK for research power (Research Excellence Framework 2021).

Our lab is hiring!

This is for a postdoctoral position @ucl.ac.uk in Respiratory Medicine.

Please check out the link for more details:
www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/...

I am pleased to present a new paper from my lab led by Hari Shankar Sunil showing that the transmembrane serine protease TMPRSS11B promotes an acidified tumor microenvironment and immune suppression in squamous lung cancer, OUT NOW in EMBO Reports👇:
embopress.org/doi/full/10....

Photo shows three glowing green bottles of chemicals, with a space where a fourth bottle can be placed Text says "New job openings" and "See all recruitment opportunities by visiting cruk.manchester.ac.uk/careers/"

We are recruiting two exciting #Postdoctoral roles:

🧪 Work with @clausjorgensen.bsky.social on targeting the tumour #microenvironment in #PancreaticCancer

🥼 Join @drwilliamhill.bsky.social to study air pollution & #LungCancer

Full details of both positions at:
www.cruk.manchester.ac.uk/careers/

Thrilled to announce I'm moving to Manchester to lead the Cancer Origins group! If you're interested in how mutations and exposures drive tumourigenesis — come join the adventure

UCL – University College London UCL is consistently ranked as one of the top ten universities in the world (QS World University Rankings 2010-2022) and is No.2 in the UK for research power (Research Excellence Framework 2021).

Our lab is hiring!

This is for a postdoctoral position @ucl.ac.uk in Respiratory Medicine.

Please check out the link for more details:
www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/...

Thank you so much!

Glasgow Cancer Scientist Awarded Prestigious UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship | Glasgow City Of Science & Innovation Alexander Raven, an early career researcher from the School of Cancer Sciences, has been awarded one of UK Research and Innovation’s (UKRI) flagship Future Leaders Fellowships.

🧬 Glasgow researcher Dr Alexander Raven has been awarded a prestigious UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship to advance understanding of how liver cancer develops, with the aim of improving detection and treatment

📍 University of Glasgow
👇 Learn more

glasgowcityofscienceandinnovation.com/glasgow-canc...

Faculty Recruitment

Please apply to our tenure-track faculty position at
@stanford-chemh.bsky.social! We are searching for a new colleague working at the interface between computation and molecular sciences. See post below and pls forward widely!
chemh.stanford.edu/opportunitie...

Recovery of human upper airway epithelium after smoking cessation is driven by a slow-cycling stem cell population and immune surveillance The upper airway epithelium in humans is maintained in homeostasis by a resident population of basal stem cells. In the presence of tobacco smoke these gain mutations that significantly increase their...

My main PhD project is now up on bioRxiv! If you’re interested in somatic evolution or machine learning for simulation-based inference, read on…

doi.org/10.1101/2025...
[1/15]

UKRI announces winners of £120 million Future Leaders Fellowships Research into the causes of lung cancer and Alzheimer’s disease are among 77 projects to be funded by UKRI’s Future Leaders Fellowships.

I am thrilled to have received a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship! This award will enable my laboratory to uncover how our body's natural antiviral defences, including APOBEC3 enzymes, contribute to the earliest stages of lung cancer. 🧪 www.ukri.org/news/ukri-an...

Tobacco smoke alters the trajectory of lung adenocarcinoma evolution via effects on somatic selection and epistasis Background Tobacco smoke is a known mutagen. However, its physiological effects on the lung may also influence the somatic selective pressures acting on mutations, further shaping cancer evolution. Th...

A study led by @jeffreytownsend.bsky.social reveals #tobacco alters lung #adenocarcinoma evolution: smokers’ tumors favor KRAS/KEAP1/STK11, never-smokers’ favor EGFR/PIK3CA—revealing distinct treatment vulnerabilities.
biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
@toomuchvitamink.bsky.social

Pre-Cancer Immunology The Pre-Cancer Immunology Lab (James Reading Lab) is mapping pre-invasive T cell dynamics during carcinogenesis to detect and intercept cancer development.

🚨 PhD Position available in our lab 🚨 exploring the power of blood immune multi-omics to detect lung cancer years prior to clinical diagnosis in a unique cohort of >10,000 CT screened individuals.
✅ Wet & dry lab
✅ September 2025 enrolment
✅ UK tuition fees only

www.ucl.ac.uk/medical-scie...

This is figure 2, which shows influenza A virus infection promotes dormant DCC proliferation and phenotypic change.

A study in Nature shows that respiratory viruses trigger metastatic breast cancer cells to proliferate in lungs in mouse models of breast cancer. These findings are supported by human observational data. go.nature.com/4l7NZ8l #medsky 🧪

Thank you so much!

Beautiful work!

Exciting! 🧪

Thanks so much!

Thank you so much!

Lung Cancer Prevention Laboratory Pioneering research in lung cancer to improve diagnosis, treatment and prevention

I am excited to announce that my laboratory @ucl.ac.uk is now open!

We are hiring so please contact us if you are interested.

www.caswelllaboratory.com

The role of APOBEC3B in lung tumor evolution and targeted cancer therapy resistance - Nature Genetics Analyses of in vivo models, cell lines and patient-derived samples show that apolipoprotein B mRNA-editing catalytic subunit 3B (APOBEC3B) not only restrains lung tumor initiation but also that its up...

Can you please add me as a contributer: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

A natural experiment on the effect of herpes zoster vaccination on dementia - Nature Using a natural experiment that avoids common bias concerns, this study finds that the live-attenuated shingles vaccine reduced the probability of a new dementia diagnosis within a follow-up period of...

Our paper on the effect of herpes zoster vaccination on dementia is now out in Nature! 🎉

Huge thanks to Felix Michalik, Seunghun Chung, @pascalge.bsky.social and especially Min Xie (@minxiesci.bsky.social) & Simon Heß (@hesss.org) making the analysis so much fun!

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Precision projections of the delay of resistance mutations in non-small cell lung cancer via suppression of APOBEC Genomic instability driven by stress-response-dependent mutagenesis is a key factor in cancer progression. Tyrosine kinase inhibitor therapy, a common…

Personalized therapeutic strategies that target APOBEC 🧪 offer promise for the enhancement of TKI treatment efficacy by delaying the evolution of drug resistance in lung cancer.

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

APOBEC rate averages versus time gained. This scatter plot illustrates the positive relationship between the average APOBEC rate across sites within patients and the corresponding time gained in each patient. The dashed line is a linear regression trend. This inferred relationship is fairly strong (slope = 1.3) and is statistically significant (P = 0.005) with n = 15 points.

Our data-driven analysis indicates that inhibition of APOBEC activity would substantially extend therapeutic efficacy 🧪, with the degree of benefit varying based on patient-specific APOBEC mutagenesis levels.

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Expected time until the first resistance mutation without complete suppression of APOBEC (purple bars) and with complete suppression of APOBEC (black bars) in each patient, expressed in molecular clock units, and the consequent expected percentage of time that could have been gained before resistance arose with APOBEC inhibited. Resistance-associated variants were identified by Caswell et al. and Isozaki et al. in each patient

By analyzing tumor sequence data to infer gene-specific and patient-specific mutation rates, we used (for the first time) some straightforward mathematics of mutation rates to project the delay of resistance obtained by suppression of APOBEC mutation 🧪.

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Mutational signature weights (potential mutational processes) underlying TKI resistance-associated gene variants in non-small-cell lung cancer patient samples, sorted by descending attribution to A3A/A3B processes.

@alkpositiveuk.bsky.social—ALK resistance mutations show greater APOBEC attribution than e.g. EGFR mutations. Therefore, patients with ALK+ tumors would benefit more from therapies suppressing APOBEC activity 🧪.

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Mutational signature weights (potential mutational processes) underlying TKI resistance-associated gene variants in non-small-cell lung cancer patient samples, sorted by descending attribution to A3A/A3B processes.

We estimated the contribution of APOBEC to mutational signatures in the twenty-one NSCLC patients that featured detailed clinical records of TKI treatment 🧪 and tissue sampling during or after treatment or at autopsy.

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Thanks for mentioning our article @jeffreytownsend.bsky.social. Your paper projecting how APOBEC inhibition could improve outcomes in patients with non-small cell lung cancer is fascinating!