Dr Nicola Potter

Dr Nicola Potter is working under the supervision of Dr Tracy Warr to investigate malignant glioma, a type of brain tumour proving extremely difficult to treat. The project, funded by Colin Oliphant Charitable Trust and now in its second year, concentrates on studying changes in DNA in normal cells that may be linked to glioma development. Nicola writes:

“We are very pleased with the progress made over the second year of this study. We have been able to characterise DNA copy changes in each of the 17 tumour cell cultures using a new microarray platform that we have successfully introduced into the laboratory.

We have identified several novel small regions of DNA copy number alteration in the majority of tumours, previously undetectable by old methods. The genes found within these DNA regions may be linked to tumour development.

Over the next six months we will investigate the expression of these candidate genes in the tumour short-term cultures compared to normal brain cultures to determine if they are expressed at an abnormal level.”