Dr Richard Clarkson

Richard Clarkson is Scientific Director of Wales Cancer Bank and Senior Lecturer of cancer research in the School of Biosciences at Cardiff University. His lab is based in the European Cancer Stem Cell Research Institute, where he is the Deputy Director. Richard received his PhD from the Faculty of Medicine, University of Manchester and carried out research at the Universities of Queensland and Edinburgh before taking up a research fellowship at Cambridge University studying the biology of cell death in the mammary gland. In 2005 he moved to Cardiff as an Cancer Research UK Research Fellow where he started his own lab focusing on some of the genes that he had identified in Cambridge and applying this knowledge to identify novel therapeutic strategies to eliminate or modify breast tumour cells responsible for cancer spread. The spread of malignant tumours around the body, termed metastasis, is the principal cause of death in patients with solid tumours. His group has identified two genes with distinct roles in the dissemination of tumours throughout the body. One affects the viability and maintenance of cancer stem cells within tumours while the other impinges on the ability of tumour cells to move through tissues. His ongoing studies are aimed at characterising these mechanisms in more detail, identifying pharmacological inhibitors of these processes in primary tumours obtained from local cancer clinics.