David Fernandez-Antoran 

David did his PhD at the National Centre for Biotechnology (Madrid) where he studied the role of the proto-oncogene c-myc and its partner max in the development and maturation of B-lymphocytes in vivo and shed light on their role in antibody Class Switch Recombination.

 In 2013 David started a postdoctoral position in the laboratory of Prof. Philip H. Jones (MRC-Cancer Unit-university of Cambridge and Sanger Institute, UK) funded by the FP7 EUROATOM consortium where he showed that low-doses of ionising radiation, promote the expansion of pre-existing mutant p53 clones in normal epithelial tissues (Fernandez-Antoran et al., 2019, Cell Stem Cell), highlighting the importance of these phenomena in the mutational landscape evolution, tissue dynamics and tumour development and setting the bases for future interventions to modify the mutational burden in normal tissues and reduce cancer risk.

In addition, in collaboration with colleagues from Sanger and Stem Cell Institute, he developed and optimized an innovative primary 3D culture system, that allows the generation of trypsin-free, ultra-long-term primary cultures of mouse and human normal and tumour epithelial tissues.

David started his own laboratory at the Gurdon Institute - University of Cambridge in 2020 funded by CRUK-RadNet, where they use primary 3D models of different epithelial tissues, in vivo cell lineage tracing, mathematical modelling, next generation sequencing methods and state-of-the-art confocal microscopy techniques to unravel the molecular responses and the cellular interactions that control normal and mutant cell behaviours and fitness in normal tissues, during the exposure to several clinical treatments such as radiotherapy and chemotherapy.