The malignant transcriptome: epigenetic control of isoform reprogramming in cancer plasticity

Kathleen Watt, PhD
Postdoctoral Fellow
Department of Oncology-Pathology
Karolinska Institute, 
Stockholm, Sweden
 

This conference is hosted by David Hipfner, PhD, Director of the Epithelial Cell Biology Research Unit.

About this conference
Plasticity, the ability of cancer cells to dynamically adapt, underlies metastasis, therapy resistance, and tumour heterogeneity. My research explores how this adaptability is driven by coordinated regulatory processes spanning from chromatin to mRNA translation. In this seminar, I will present our work uncovering how hypoxia-induced epigenetic remodelling reshapes the “malignant transcriptome” at the mRNA isoform-level to promote adaptive phenotypes. I will also discuss a new approach for dissecting sequence-encoded determinants of context-dependent post-transcriptional regulation. Building on these findings, my research program integrates molecular biology and computational approaches to define how dynamic isoform-level reprogramming shapes adaptive cancer phenotypes, with the goal of identifying new biomarkers and therapeutic vulnerabilities within these regulatory networks.

About Kathleen Watt
Dr. Kathleen Watt obtained her PhD in Biochemistry from Queen’s University under the supervision of Dr. Andrew Craig, where she investigated the expression and function of microRNAs in metastatic cancers. She is currently a postdoctoral fellow at Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, co-supervised by Drs. Ola Larsson and Lynne-Marie Postovit (Queen’s University). Her research combines experimental molecular biology and computational approaches and focuses on mechanisms of translational control in cancer, with particular emphasis on dissecting the coordination of processes that reshape mRNA isoforms and their translational regulation to drive phenotypic adaptations. She is a recipient of the Cancer Research Society Next Generation of Scientists Award, supporting her ongoing work to define how adaptive gene expression programs contribute to cancer plasticity at the isoform level.

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