DNA graffiti: mutation patterns in cancer - watch the Francis Crick Lecture given by Serena Nik-Zainal

Professor of Genomic Medicine and group leader at the Early Cancer Institute, Serena Nik-Zainal, was awared the Francis Crick Medal in 2022 and gave the prize lecture at the Royal Society on 12th January 2023.

In the lecture, Professor Serena Nik-Zainal describes how her team have explored the extraordinary DNA graffiti that has been seen in human cancers, using a combination of big data computational approaches and systematic experimental methods.

DNA graffiti: Mutation patterns in human cancer and how to use them in medicine

Watch the lecture on the Royal Society YouTube channel:

The prestigious award from The Royal Society was given to Professor Serena Nik-Zainal for her enormous contributions to understanding the aetiology of cancers by her analyses of mutation signatures in cancer genomes, which is now being applied to cancer therapy. Serena developed expertise in cancer whole genome sequence (WGS) analysis and interpretation just as next-generation sequencing approaches were coming to the fore. With only 21 breast cancer WGS samples available in 2012, it became clear that human cancers were highly individual. Each cancer is profoundly marked by an extensive amount of mutagenesis, all previously hidden, prior to the advent of WGS. Etched into the DNA of cancers are graffiti-like mutation patterns, which could be informative of underlying biological abnormalities, unique to each person’s cancer, with potential for application in precision medicine. 

In this lecture, Professor Nik-Zainal describes how her team have explored the extraordinary DNA graffiti that has been seen in human cancers, using a combination of big data computational approaches and systematic experimental methods. She provides an account of how they have designed algorithms that could be used to interpret cancer genomes for clinical purposes and how they have taken steps towards clinical validation studies for her algorithms. Professor Nik-Zainal touches on her team’s recent endeavour, reporting the largest cohort of WGS cancers worldwide of nearly 20,000 patients recruited via the NHS. She ends by bringing the audience through a selection of real cancer WGS patient stories.