Researcher

Chit Fang Cheok received her B.Sc (Hons) from Imperial College London and her DPhil degree from the University of Oxford. While at the Molecular Oncology group in Cancer Research UK (Oxford), she studied the role of a causative mutation in BLM in a rare chromosomal instability disorder, Bloom’s syndrome and identified a novel activity of BLM in DNA repair. She completed her postdoctoral training at IMCB and the A*STAR p53Lab with Sir David Lane. Her interest in tumor suppressive mechanisms, genomic instability, and cancer forms the basis of her interest and search for new therapeutic modalities for cancer. Using a combination of approaches including high throughput screening, sequencing and animal models to probe for defects in tumor suppressor pathways, she is identifying molecular vulnerabilities in tumor cells which provide the rationale for the design of promising new therapeutic strategies. This work has also broadened to encompass the study of cancer metabolism. Her expertise in genomic stability has also led her to explore the molecular basis of age-related DNA damage.