College of Medical and Dental Sciences Inaugural Lecture

You are warmly invited to hear Professor Tatjana Stankovic, Professor of Cancer Genetics, School of Cancer Sciences, College of Medical and Dental Sciences deliver her Inaugural Lecture entitled:

‘The story of the ATM gene: Bench and Bedside’

A tight regulation of cellular responses to DNA damage prevents the generation of chromosome alterations and facilitates elimination of cells with an excess of unrepaired DNA breaks. The central position in the protein cascade that regulates this process belongs to Ataxia Telangiectasia Mutated protein, ATM. Loss of function of this protein leads to tumour development but also to tumour progression and chemoresistance. The ATM function is particularly important in lymphoid cells that undergo frequent DNA breaks during their development and consequently loss of ATM function leads to development of tumours mostly of lymphoid origin. This is the case not only for individuals with Ataxia Telangiectasia syndrome who are born without a functional ATM gene, but also for a number of individuals in the general population who develop lymphoid tumours with a frequently mutated ATM gene. Recently it has become clear that loss of ATM function provides a unique opportunity for tumour specific treatment by targeting the residual DNA repair capacity of ATM null tumour cells. Full understanding of the ATM null phenotype will provide a number of such targeted strategies and finding these strategies is fundamental focus of Tanja’s research.

Tanja Stankovic qualified with a First Class honours in Medicine from University of Belgrade in 1980. In her early career she pursued two major scientific interests, regulation of haemopoiesis and molecular mechanisms involved in the development of leukaemia and lymphoma. The first interest led to her MD in 1986 from the University of Belgrade and the second to her PhD in 1995, from the University of Birmingham.

Following her PhD studies under the supervision of Malcolm Taylor, that involved positional cloning of the ATM gene, Tanja continued to work on the role of the ATM gene in sporadic lymphoid malignancies. In 2004 she became a Senior Lecturer and won a specialist programme grant from the Leukaemia Research Fund to study the consequences and therapeutic potential of ATM inactivation in B cell chronic lymphocytic leukaemia. Subsequently, in collaboration with Prof Moss and Dr Guy Pratt she was able to design a clinical trial based on her research findings. She progressed to Reader in 2007 and to a Chair in 2010.

Tanja is an enthusiastic advocator of translational research and has lectured widely, both in Europe and America. Beyond her major focus on the ATM gene, Tanja’s work revolves around molecular mechanisms involved in the pathogenesis of leukaemia that can be targeted for therapy, most recently the targeting of transcriptionally active chromatin in chemoresistant paediatric leukaemia.