“Support from the Sontag Foundation allows us to define how developmental mechanisms are re-deployed by cancer cells during tumorigenesis and metastasis. By examining the biology of cancer cells through a developmental prism, we hope to identify novel targets for therapeutic intervention.”

About DSA-Funded Research

Dr. Simoes-Costa's research group combines state of the art developmental biology techniques with systems-level approaches, such as transcriptomics and epigenomic analysis, to characterize novel regulatory circuits controlling neural crest differentiation in amniote model systems. They focus on how transcription factors and signaling systems are organized into regulatory circuits that drive multipotent progenitors into adopting a specific cell fate. Ultimately, their goal is to guide differentiation of stem cells into distinct cell types for the purpose of repair and regeneration, in a way that recapitulates how this process occurs in vivo.