Giulia Orlando

I have graduated at the University of Turin in 2010 before starting my DPhil at the University of Oxford, which I concluded in 2014. During my postdoc at The Institute of Cancer Research, I investigated how germline and somatic variations in regulatory elements can affect gene regulation in cancer. 

I have joined the team Prof. Adam Mead in 2020, where I am investigating how aberrant gene regulation contributes to the development of a rare childhood leukaemia, namely juvenile myelomonocytic leukaemia (JMML). Mutations in RAS pathway genes alone in the hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) are sufficient to drive oncogenesis, making JMML the perfect disease model to study aberrant RAS signalling. Recent data from our group has shown that RAS-activated HSPCs are characterised by a distinct transcriptional profile. However, very little is known about the gene regulatory network sustaining RAS transcriptional programme. I will employ cutting-edge technologies  to dissect how aberrant RAS activation leads to epigenetic changes in order to identify the key transcription factors and chromatin remodelers involved. As effective targeted therapy to tackle RAS proteins has proven exceedingly difficult to develop, my final aim is to elucidate novel therapeutic strategies to target RAS signalling activation in JMML patients.