David Adams PhD

Dr. David Adams is based at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, part of our Cambridge Cancer Centre(link is external). Here, he’s busy making his way through millions of DNA ‘letters’ to find ‘spelling mistakes’ that could lead to cancer. We know that genetic ‘spelling mistakes’ can result in genes becoming faulty, which can lead to a cell becoming cancerous. But there is still work to be done to unpick how these mistakes arise. Dr. Adams is on the hunt for these cancer-causing genetic faults in liver and lung cancer and will use this information to help develop new, more precise treatments. He’s also looking into how things like air pollution and cigarette smoke can cause changes in DNA that lead to the development of lung cancer. This information could then be used to help find new ways to prevent people from developing cancer, and potentially reduce the number of people affected by the disease.