Research Abstract
My research focuses on the relationship between developmental pathways and tumorigenesis in Wilms tumor, the most common pediatric kidney cancer. Our laboratory uses genomic technologies to identify and characterize pathways implicated in pediatric solid tumors and sarcomas. An important feature linking many of these malignancies is their strong association with developmental processes and, in particular, with the mechanisms that regulate the differentiation of stem cell populations during organogenesis. Our work combines the use of genomic technologies for direct analysis of tumors with functional analysis of novel pathways that are common to development and cancer.