James Thorne PhD, MRes

Dr Thorne is an Associate Professor of Cancer, Epigenetics, and Nutrition at the School of Food Science and Nutrition. He obtained an undergraduate BSc (2:1) in Genetics from Queen Mary University of London in 1999, before going on to complete an MRes at University College London (2000), and a PhD from Imperial College (2004). Dr Thorne then undertook periods of post-doctoral research at the Universities of Birmingham and Leeds researching the interaction between nuclear receptors and epigenetic mechanisms of gene regulation.

Dr Thorne defined a range of epigenetic changes that occur in the normal and cancerous prostate in response to Vitamin D and how cross-talk between members of the Nuclear Receptor superfamily alters cell fate decisions. He then moved to the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Leeds to study how components of the NFkB pathway combined with the histone code to influence elongating RNA polymerase activity, leading to further work on cancer-specific transcription and epigenetic mechanisms can cause chemotherapy resistance in cancer patients, in the laboratory of Thomas Hughes. Dr Thorne continues to collaborate closely with Dr Hughes and other members of the Faculty of Medicine by co-supervision of post-graduate research students, and regular breast cancer-focused meetings supported through membership of the Leeds Breast Cancer Research Group.