Simon Boulton
| Simon Boulton | |
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| Born | Simon Joseph Boulton 1972 (age 44–45) Leeds |
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| Thesis | The functional characterisation of Ku in the budding yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae (1998) |
| Doctoral advisor | Steve Jackson |
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Website www |
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Simon Joseph Boulton is an award-winning British scientist who has made major contributions to the understanding of DNA repair and the treatment of cancer resulting from DNA damage. He currently occupies the position of Senior Research Scientist and group leader of the DNA Damage Response (DDR) Laboratory at the Francis Crick Institute, Clare Hall Laboratories. He is also an honorary Professor at University College London.
Boulton was born in Leeds in 1972. He studied Molecular Biology at the University of Edinburgh, then studied for a Ph.D. at the University of Cambridge under Professor Steve Jackson of the Gurdon Institute from 1994 to 1998. It was at Cambridge that Boulton began researching mechanisms of DNA. He has described his first exposure to the research environment at Cambridge as "extremely influential."
The website of Cancer Research UK explains Boulton's work in this way: human DNA "is constantly under assault from chemical reactions taking place in our bodies and from things we're exposed to in our everyday lives....Most of the time, DNA damage is repaired successfully by the cell. But if the cell continues to grow whilst its DNA is already damaged, it can lead to cancer." Boulton is learning about DNA damage repair "by first studying it inside a microscopic worm called C. elegans and then extending these findings to human cells," an approach that has revealed "remarkable similarities between the genes and proteins used to repair DNA damage in the worm and in humans....By studying this fundamental process of DNA damage repair, the researchers have contributed to our understanding of how faults in the system can lead to cancer."
Boulton himself has explained his work at the DNA Damage Response Laboratory as follows: "DNA is a highly reactive molecule that is susceptible to damage. Fortunately, cells have evolved specialised repair processes that are remarkably efficient in correcting specific types of DNA damage. Failure to correctly repair DNA damage will lead to mutagenic change, which can contribute to ageing and cancer. Indeed, defects in genes that repair DNA damage are the underlying cause of a number of hereditary ageing/cancer predisposition syndromes such as Fanconi anemia and Blooms. The focus of my lab is to identify new DNA repair genes, understand how they work in DNA repair in mitotic and meiotic cells and determine how defects in these processes contribute to human disease such as cancer. We hope that our work will provide an improved understanding of how DNA repair works and how, when DNA repair is compromised, it contributes to cancer/ageing and or infertility disorders in humans." Boulton's research has resulted in several major breakthroughs in understanding that are viewed as highly promising with regard to the potential development of new cancer treatments.
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Wikipedia