Research Program Membership

Full Member of

• Breast Cancer

Research Interests

Dr. Gilley's laboratory is interested in the basic composition and maintenance of the mammalian telomere in normal and cancer cells. Telomere maintenance is a critical component of cellular senescence, telomerase is activated in most cancers, and telomere dysfunction may be an early event causing genomic instability during the progression of certain cancers. This is an extremely exciting time for telomere research: we are assembling the protein components that constitute the telomere, discovering methods to determine the complex mechanism of telomerase regulation, and have recently discovered several telomere proteins that likely play critical roles in telomere maintenance via signal transduction. Dr. Gilley's laboratory focuses on two major areas: 1) Identifying the fundamental workings of the mammalian telomere with a concentration on determining the extent and mechanisms of direct crosstalk via signaling between telomere maintenance and DNA repair and; 2) Exploring the hypothesis that telomere dysfunction is a key cause of genomic instability in cancer . These areas are highly interrelated, since basic understanding of the molecular workings of the telomere is required to determine how these processes may be altered during tumorigenesis. Dr. Gilley's laboratory is currently exploiting cancer specific genetic instability biomarkers, such as telomere dysfunction, for early detection of breast tumorigenesis. Importantly, this research is expected to facilitate translational applications for early cancer detection strategies.

Publications

PubMed Listing »

Education

Post-doctoral Fellowship University of California, San Francisco, CA 1997

Ph.D. Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana 1992