Dr Rachael Natrajan heads the Functional Genomics team in the Breast Cancer Now Toby Robins Research Centre, within the Division of Breast Cancer at the ICR. She focuses on understanding the biology of breast cancers that are resistant to treatment – to identify new therapeutic targets and biomarkers for these aggressive forms of the disease.

Dr Natrajan’s work involves the use of patient-derived models of resistance to investigate the effectiveness of existing and experimental therapies. She is also exploiting cutting-edge tumour profiling technologies to identify key differences between patient breast tumours that respond differently to treatment – to develop new biomarkers of resistance.

Dr Natrajan’s team has already uncovered genomic alterations that are specific to aggressive forms of breast cancer. She is now looking to form partnerships with industry to find ways to target these with new therapies.

Our researchers in the Division of Breast Cancer work closely with industry to develop novel breast cancer treatments, in a multidisciplinary approach that ranges from clinically-relevant fundamental biology to therapy discovery. They are developing biomarkers, discovery novel drivers of cancer phenotypes and testing new therapeutic approaches in proof-of-concept clinical trials.