Group Leader:
Akira Orimo
I graduated from the Juntendo Medical School, Japan, where I received my M.D. in 1989 before joining the University of Tokyo, Japan, to undertake a PhD in Internal Clinical Medicine, which I completed in 1994. I was an Assistant Professor from 1995-2000 and promoted to Associate Professor 2000-2002 within the Department of Biochemistry, at the Saitama Medical School (Masami Muramatsu laboratory) in Japan, and was a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Biology (Robert A. Weinberg laboratory) at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, between 2000 and 2007. Since 2007, I have headed the Stromal-Tumour Interaction Group at the Paterson Institute for Cancer Research. My research interests focus on understanding tumour-stroma interaction, the roles of stromal fibroblasts in enhancing human carcinoma progression and the development of a potential therapeutic approach targeting stromal fibroblasts.
Senior Scientific Officer
Kieran Mellody
Postdoctoral Fellow
Yasushi Kojima
Urszula Polanska
PhD Student
Ahmet Acar
Stromal Tumour Interaction Group
Tumours are highly complex tissues and the non-neoplastic cell compartment of tumours, which is often termed the “stroma”, is itself quite complex histologically. Carcinoma cells initially recruit and/or activate these various stromal non-neoplastic cells, including fibroblasts, myofibroblasts, immune cells, endothelial cells, bone marrow-derived cells, and etc. The resulting stromal cells reciprocate by fostering carcinoma cell growth and survival during the course of tumour progression.
Studying the heterotypic interactions between the neoplastic cells and the supporting stroma is believed to be essential for understanding nature of a bulk of carcinoma mass. However, such research fails to include and address another variable: that the stroma is itself altered and might co-evolve with the tumour cells during the course of tumour progression. Read more about our research