· How is a stem cell driven to continue proliferating or to differentiate into a specialised tissue?
· How do adult cells within self-renewing tissues make the choice to proliferate or to differentiate so that the balance between both processes is maintained?
· How do these cells take a different road in cancer?
· What are the mechanisms leading to genome instability?
In our view, cancer is a natural selection process exerted on instable cells and developmental cues. Alterations in cancer drive cells into processes that they should not undertake in the adult tissue, but that occur during embryo development.
This is why we believe that studying the control of normality sheds understanding into cancer.
Applying this understanding onto human disease is our ultimate target. To this end, we study the Skin and Skin Cancer (carcinoma, melanoma).
