Websites
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Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine
University of Copenhagen
Colleges
Andrew Blackford
PhD
Associate Professor & CRUK Senior Fellow
Andrew Blackford is an associate professor and group leader in the Department of Oncology, based at the MRC Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine. His group studies the signalling mechanisms cells use to respond to DNA damage and why defects in these pathways cause human diseases such as cancer.
After obtaining his PhD in the School of Cancer Sciences at the University of Birmingham in 2008, he undertook postdoctoral positions with Wojciech Niedzwiedz at the University of Oxford in 2009 and Steve Jackson in the Wellcome Trust/CRUK Gurdon Institute at the University of Cambridge in 2012. He established his lab in 2016 with the support of a Cancer Research UK Career Development Fellowship, and was awarded a Senior Cancer Research Fellowship from Cancer Research UK in 2023 to continue his research.
In 2024, he was awarded a Novo Nordisk Foundation Hallas-Møller Ascending Investigator fellowship to establish a new lab in the Center for Chromosome Stability in the Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine at the University of Copenhagen.
GROUP MEMBERS
Kaima Tsukada, Postdoctoral Researcher
Liudmyla Lototska, Postdoctoral Researcher
Ipek Ilgin Gönenç, Postdoctoral Researcher
Matous Palek, Postdoctoral Researcher
Julius Bannister, DPhil Student
Luis Herfurth, MSc Student
Key publications
BLM and BRCA1-BARD1 coordinate complementary mechanisms of joint DNA molecule resolution.
Journal article
Tsukada K. et al, (2024), Mol Cell, 84, 640 - 658.e10
Targeting DNA damage response pathways in cancer.
Journal article
Groelly FJ. et al, (2023), Nat Rev Cancer, 23, 78 - 94
Mitotic DNA synthesis is caused by transcription-replication conflicts in BRCA2-deficient cells.
Journal article
Groelly FJ. et al, (2022), Mol Cell, 82, 3382 - 3397.e7
The Bloom syndrome complex senses RPA-coated single-stranded DNA to restart stalled replication forks.
Journal article
Shorrocks A-MK. et al, (2021), Nat Commun, 12
MDC1 Interacts with TOPBP1 to Maintain Chromosomal Stability during Mitosis.
Journal article
Leimbacher P-A. et al, (2019), Mol Cell, 74, 571 - 583.e8
PGBD5 promotes site-specific oncogenic mutations in human tumors.
Journal article
Henssen AG. et al, (2017), Nat Genet, 49, 1005 - 1014
ATM, ATR, and DNA-PK: The Trinity at the Heart of the DNA Damage Response.
Journal article
Blackford AN. and Jackson SP., (2017), Mol Cell, 66, 801 - 817
Synthetic lethality between PAXX and XLF in mammalian development.
Journal article
Balmus G. et al, (2016), Genes Dev, 30, 2152 - 2157
TRAIP promotes DNA damage response during genome replication and is mutated in primordial dwarfism.
Journal article
Harley ME. et al, (2016), Nat Genet, 48, 36 - 43
DNA repair. PAXX, a paralog of XRCC4 and XLF, interacts with Ku to promote DNA double-strand break repair.
Journal article
Ochi T. et al, (2015), Science, 347, 185 - 188