Appointments

Professor Inke Nathke
Chair of Epithelial Biology
College of Life Sciences
Inke Näthke was born and raised in Northern Germany. She studied Biochemistry at San Jose State University in California in the USA and then obtained her PhD at the University of California San Francisco.

She did postdoctoral work at Stanford University and at Harvard Medical School before moving to Dundee where she is currently a Cancer Research UK Senior Research Fellow and Reader in the Division of Cell and Developmental Biology within the College of Life Sciences.

Her research focuses on changes in the epithelium of the intestinal tract in early changes of cancer. In particular, she aims to understand the role of the Adenomatous polyposis coli (APC) protein in the earliest stages of colorectal cancer with particular focus on the regulation of cytoskeletal proteins.

Ongoing work in her laboratory uses of a variety of experimental systems to identify the earliest changes in gut epithelium that result from loss of functional APC to determine how these changes set the stage for tumour development.

Most recently she has used three dimensional tissue imaging to understand the differences in tissue architecture that result from mutations in APC, which are common to most colorectal cancers.

Professor Tomo Tanaka
Chair of Cell and Molecular Biology
College of Life Sciences
Professor Tanaka has been a Principal Investigator at the College of Life Sciences since 2001 and was promoted to Professor in 2007.

He studied at the University of Tokyo in Japan and obtained his MD in 1987 and his PhD in 1995. The following year he began work as a post-doctoral researcher at the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology (IMP) in Vienna and became a staff scientist there in 1999.

Professor Tanaka's research group at the College of Life Sciences studies mechanisms of chromosome duplication and segregation during the cell division cycle.

His research aim is to reveal how cells avoid chromosome instability that potentially causes cancers and congenital disorders.

He was awarded an EMBO Young Investigator Award in 2000, Lister Institute Research Prize in 2005 and The Hooke Medal from the British Society for Cell Biology in 2007.