Professor Susana Godinho is a Senior lecturer at the Centre for Molecular Oncology in Barts Cancer Institute, Queen Mary University of London (QMUL).
Professor Godinho has led a distinguished research career that has included positions at Gulbenkian Institute of Science, the University of Cambridge, the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School.
In 2016 she was awarded a Lister Institute fellowship to help further her research into tumour progression and related areas.
Professor Godinho’s team is currently investigating “centrosome amplification.” Centrosomes are parts of cells that regulate cell division and are the primary locations in which microtubules (small hollow tubes that maintain cell shape) are organised.
Extra centrosomes are often found in cancer cells, and Professor Godinho’s team are discovering more about how cells with amplified centrosomes impact tumour progression and can be targeted, with a view to developing new cancer therapies.
This work has led to Professor Godinho being recognised as “cell scientist to watch” by the Journal of Cell Science in February of 2018 due to her contributions to the field.
Such contributions include, for example, a recent paper on an unexpected link between centrosome clustering capacity and cortical contractility through E-cadherin and DDR1 proteins. The paper is entitled: “Loss of E-cadherin provides tolerance to centrosome amplification in epithelial cancer cells”: and was published in the Journal of Cell Biology (This paper can be read at this link). A highlight of this work can also be found here: “When E-cadherin is away, centrosomes can play”
We are very pleased to support Professor Godinho’s research and are looking forward to viewing more of her progress in the future.