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caswelldrm.bsky.social
Debbie Caswell
@caswelldrm.bsky.social
70 followers 41 following 13 posts
Principal Research Fellow @UCL | Lung cancer prevention laboratory
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Debbie Caswell @caswelldrm.bsky.social · Sep 25
Our lab is hiring!

This is for a postdoctoral position @ucl.ac.uk in Respiratory Medicine.

Please check out the link for more details:
www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/...
UCL – University College London
UCL is consistently ranked as one of the top ten universities in the world (QS World University Rankings 2010-2022) and is No.2 in the UK for research power (Research Excellence Framework 2021).
www.ucl.ac.uk
Reposted by Debbie Caswell
kateodonnell-lab.bsky.social
I am pleased to present a new paper from my lab led by Hari Shankar Sunil showing that the transmembrane serine protease TMPRSS11B promotes an acidified tumor microenvironment and immune suppression in squamous lung cancer, OUT NOW in EMBO Reports👇:
embopress.org/doi/full/10....
November 11, 2025 at 6:21 PM
Reposted by Debbie Caswell
cruk-mi.bsky.social
We are recruiting two exciting #Postdoctoral roles:

🧪 Work with @clausjorgensen.bsky.social on targeting the tumour #microenvironment in #PancreaticCancer

🥼 Join @drwilliamhill.bsky.social to study air pollution & #LungCancer

Full details of both positions at:
www.cruk.manchester.ac.uk/careers/
Photo shows three glowing green bottles of chemicals, with a space where a fourth bottle can be placed Text says "New job openings" and "See all recruitment opportunities by visiting cruk.manchester.ac.uk/careers/"
June 6, 2025 at 1:56 PM
Reposted by Debbie Caswell
drwilliamhill.bsky.social
Thrilled to announce I'm moving to Manchester to lead the Cancer Origins group! If you're interested in how mutations and exposures drive tumourigenesis — come join the adventure
cruk-mi.bsky.social Cancer Research UK Manchester Institute @cruk-mi.bsky.social · Jun 6
We are recruiting two exciting #Postdoctoral roles:

🧪 Work with @clausjorgensen.bsky.social on targeting the tumour #microenvironment in #PancreaticCancer

🥼 Join @drwilliamhill.bsky.social to study air pollution & #LungCancer

Full details of both positions at:
www.cruk.manchester.ac.uk/careers/
Photo shows three glowing green bottles of chemicals, with a space where a fourth bottle can be placed Text says "New job openings" and "See all recruitment opportunities by visiting cruk.manchester.ac.uk/careers/"
June 6, 2025 at 3:32 PM
caswelldrm.bsky.social
Our lab is hiring!

This is for a postdoctoral position @ucl.ac.uk in Respiratory Medicine.

Please check out the link for more details:
www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/...
UCL – University College London
UCL is consistently ranked as one of the top ten universities in the world (QS World University Rankings 2010-2022) and is No.2 in the UK for research power (Research Excellence Framework 2021).
www.ucl.ac.uk
September 25, 2025 at 3:26 PM
Reposted by Debbie Caswell
gcosi.bsky.social
🧬 Glasgow researcher Dr Alexander Raven has been awarded a prestigious UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship to advance understanding of how liver cancer develops, with the aim of improving detection and treatment

📍 University of Glasgow
👇 Learn more

glasgowcityofscienceandinnovation.com/glasgow-canc...
Glasgow Cancer Scientist Awarded Prestigious UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship | Glasgow City Of Science & Innovation
Alexander Raven, an early career researcher from the School of Cancer Sciences, has been awarded one of UK Research and Innovation’s (UKRI) flagship Future Leaders Fellowships.
glasgowcityofscienceandinnovation.com
September 17, 2025 at 9:21 AM
Reposted by Debbie Caswell
pollyfordyce.bsky.social
Please apply to our tenure-track faculty position at
@stanford-chemh.bsky.social! We are searching for a new colleague working at the interface between computation and molecular sciences. See post below and pls forward widely!
chemh.stanford.edu/opportunitie...
Faculty Recruitment
chemh.stanford.edu
September 17, 2025 at 5:54 PM
Reposted by Debbie Caswell
hughselwayclarke.bsky.social
My main PhD project is now up on bioRxiv! If you’re interested in somatic evolution or machine learning for simulation-based inference, read on…

doi.org/10.1101/2025...
[1/15]
Recovery of human upper airway epithelium after smoking cessation is driven by a slow-cycling stem cell population and immune surveillance
The upper airway epithelium in humans is maintained in homeostasis by a resident population of basal stem cells. In the presence of tobacco smoke these gain mutations that significantly increase their...
doi.org
September 3, 2025 at 1:04 PM
caswelldrm.bsky.social
I am thrilled to have received a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship! This award will enable my laboratory to uncover how our body's natural antiviral defences, including APOBEC3 enzymes, contribute to the earliest stages of lung cancer. 🧪 www.ukri.org/news/ukri-an...
UKRI announces winners of £120 million Future Leaders Fellowships
Research into the causes of lung cancer and Alzheimer’s disease are among 77 projects to be funded by UKRI’s Future Leaders Fellowships.
www.ukri.org
September 16, 2025 at 10:21 AM
Reposted by Debbie Caswell
yalecancer.bsky.social
A study led by @jeffreytownsend.bsky.social reveals #tobacco alters lung #adenocarcinoma evolution: smokers’ tumors favor KRAS/KEAP1/STK11, never-smokers’ favor EGFR/PIK3CA—revealing distinct treatment vulnerabilities.
biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
@toomuchvitamink.bsky.social
Tobacco smoke alters the trajectory of lung adenocarcinoma evolution via effects on somatic selection and epistasis
Background Tobacco smoke is a known mutagen. However, its physiological effects on the lung may also influence the somatic selective pressures acting on mutations, further shaping cancer evolution. Th...
biorxiv.org
August 26, 2025 at 12:33 PM
Reposted by Debbie Caswell
jamesreading.bsky.social
🚨 PhD Position available in our lab 🚨 exploring the power of blood immune multi-omics to detect lung cancer years prior to clinical diagnosis in a unique cohort of >10,000 CT screened individuals.
✅ Wet & dry lab
✅ September 2025 enrolment
✅ UK tuition fees only

www.ucl.ac.uk/medical-scie...
Pre-Cancer Immunology
The Pre-Cancer Immunology Lab (James Reading Lab) is mapping pre-invasive T cell dynamics during carcinogenesis to detect and intercept cancer development.
www.ucl.ac.uk
August 5, 2025 at 5:57 PM
Reposted by Debbie Caswell
natureportfolio.nature.com
A study in Nature shows that respiratory viruses trigger metastatic breast cancer cells to proliferate in lungs in mouse models of breast cancer. These findings are supported by human observational data. go.nature.com/4l7NZ8l #medsky 🧪
This is figure 2, which shows influenza A virus infection promotes dormant DCC proliferation and phenotypic change.
July 31, 2025 at 7:13 PM
caswelldrm.bsky.social
Beautiful work!
buissonlab.bsky.social Rémi Buisson @buissonlab.bsky.social · Apr 16
Today, we report that APOBEC3B targets unprotected single-stranded DNA at replication forks upon ATR inhibition, triggering a reaction cascade involving UNG2 and APE1 that leads to fork collapse and hyperactivation of PARP1, causing replication catastrophe.
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Mechanism of DNA replication fork breakage and PARP1 hyperactivation during replication catastrophe
Upon ATR inhibition, APOBEC3B targets unprotected single-stranded DNA at replication forks, leading to fork breakage.
www.science.org
April 17, 2025 at 5:54 PM
caswelldrm.bsky.social
Exciting! 🧪
April 11, 2025 at 10:21 AM
caswelldrm.bsky.social
I am excited to announce that my laboratory @ucl.ac.uk is now open!

We are hiring so please contact us if you are interested.

www.caswelllaboratory.com
Lung Cancer Prevention Laboratory
Pioneering research in lung cancer to improve diagnosis, treatment and prevention
www.caswelllaboratory.com
April 7, 2025 at 7:34 PM
Reposted by Debbie Caswell
meyting.bsky.social
Our paper on the effect of herpes zoster vaccination on dementia is now out in Nature! 🎉

Huge thanks to Felix Michalik, Seunghun Chung, @pascalge.bsky.social and especially Min Xie (@minxiesci.bsky.social) & Simon Heß (@hesss.org) making the analysis so much fun!

www.nature.com/articles/s41...
A natural experiment on the effect of herpes zoster vaccination on dementia - Nature
Using a natural experiment that avoids common bias concerns, this study finds that the live-attenuated shingles vaccine reduced the probability of a new dementia diagnosis within a follow-up period of...
www.nature.com
April 2, 2025 at 4:41 PM
Reposted by Debbie Caswell
jeffreytownsend.bsky.social
Personalized therapeutic strategies that target APOBEC 🧪 offer promise for the enhancement of TKI treatment efficacy by delaying the evolution of drug resistance in lung cancer.

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Precision projections of the delay of resistance mutations in non-small cell lung cancer via suppression of APOBEC
Genomic instability driven by stress-response-dependent mutagenesis is a key factor in cancer progression. Tyrosine kinase inhibitor therapy, a common…
www.sciencedirect.com
March 23, 2025 at 3:49 PM
Reposted by Debbie Caswell
jeffreytownsend.bsky.social
Our data-driven analysis indicates that inhibition of APOBEC activity would substantially extend therapeutic efficacy 🧪, with the degree of benefit varying based on patient-specific APOBEC mutagenesis levels.

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
APOBEC rate averages versus time gained. This scatter plot illustrates the positive relationship between the average APOBEC rate across sites within patients and the corresponding time gained in each patient. The dashed line is a linear regression trend. This inferred relationship is fairly strong (slope = 1.3) and is statistically significant (P = 0.005) with n = 15 points.
March 23, 2025 at 3:49 PM
Reposted by Debbie Caswell
jeffreytownsend.bsky.social
By analyzing tumor sequence data to infer gene-specific and patient-specific mutation rates, we used (for the first time) some straightforward mathematics of mutation rates to project the delay of resistance obtained by suppression of APOBEC mutation 🧪.

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Expected time until the first resistance mutation without complete suppression of APOBEC (purple bars) and with complete suppression of APOBEC (black bars) in each patient, expressed in molecular clock units, and the consequent expected percentage of time that could have been gained before resistance arose with APOBEC inhibited. Resistance-associated variants were identified by Caswell et al. and Isozaki et al. in each patient
March 23, 2025 at 3:49 PM
Reposted by Debbie Caswell
jeffreytownsend.bsky.social
@alkpositiveuk.bsky.social—ALK resistance mutations show greater APOBEC attribution than e.g. EGFR mutations. Therefore, patients with ALK+ tumors would benefit more from therapies suppressing APOBEC activity 🧪.

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Mutational signature weights (potential mutational processes) underlying TKI resistance-associated gene variants in non-small-cell lung cancer patient samples, sorted by descending attribution to A3A/A3B processes.
March 23, 2025 at 3:49 PM
Reposted by Debbie Caswell
jeffreytownsend.bsky.social
We estimated the contribution of APOBEC to mutational signatures in the twenty-one NSCLC patients that featured detailed clinical records of TKI treatment 🧪 and tissue sampling during or after treatment or at autopsy.

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Mutational signature weights (potential mutational processes) underlying TKI resistance-associated gene variants in non-small-cell lung cancer patient samples, sorted by descending attribution to A3A/A3B processes.
March 23, 2025 at 3:49 PM
caswelldrm.bsky.social
Thanks for mentioning our article @jeffreytownsend.bsky.social. Your paper projecting how APOBEC inhibition could improve outcomes in patients with non-small cell lung cancer is fascinating!
March 27, 2025 at 9:10 PM
Reposted by Debbie Caswell
jeffreytownsend.bsky.social
APOBEC drives genetic variation in lung tumors, especially in response to tyrosine kinase inhibitor therapy 🧪.

Inhibition of APOBEC during use of tyrosine kinase inhibitors could improve outcomes.

In a paper just out in Lung Cancer, we show how much.

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Precision projections of the delay of resistance mutations in non-small cell lung cancer via suppression of APOBEC
Genomic instability driven by stress-response-dependent mutagenesis is a key factor in cancer progression. Tyrosine kinase inhibitor therapy, a common…
www.sciencedirect.com
March 23, 2025 at 3:49 PM
Reposted by Debbie Caswell
choo.bsky.social
My NIH study section that was to meet tomorrow was one of those canceled. This represents many months of work by the applicants and by the NIH staff and reviewers. Devastating is the correct word.
liebschutz.bsky.social Jane Liebschutz, MD MPH (she/her) @liebschutz.bsky.social · Jan 22
All NIH study sections canceled indefinitely. This will halt science and devastate research budgets in universities.
January 22, 2025 at 11:52 PM
Reposted by Debbie Caswell
freja-kirsebom.bsky.social
Our study on the effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccines in preventing disease in pregnant women and their infants is now published in BMJ Medicine.

https://bmjmedicine.bmj.com/content/3/1/e000696
December 11, 2024 at 5:55 PM
Reposted by Debbie Caswell
buissonlab.bsky.social
New Lab Preprint!🥳 Using CRISPR-Translate, a genome-wide CRISPR-Cas9 knockout screening method developed by the lab exploiting translation levels as a readout, we reveal that PACT is an inhibitor of PKR and not an activator during RNA viral infections. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Cooperative Role of PACT and ADAR1 in Preventing Aberrant PKR Activation by Self-Derived Double-Stranded RNA
Double-stranded RNAs (dsRNAs) produced during viral infections are recognized by the innate immune sensor protein kinase R (PKR), triggering a host translation shutoff that inhibits viral replication ...
www.biorxiv.org
November 28, 2024 at 5:05 PM