Oncogenes are genes capable of driving cancer transformation through different mechanisms that lead to continuous cell division, a hallmark of cancer. Sustained proliferation can cause high levels of replication stress, which is defined as the stalling or slowing down of replication forks during DNA synthesis. Oncogene-induced replication stress is considered one of the initial events of cellular transformation and also an important mechanism for tumour maintenance since it can promote genome instability and be a source of mutations. It is not clear how cancer cells can cope with high levels of replication stress while maintaining high levels of cell division.

In my project, I am investigating the tolerance mechanism of cancer cells to replication stress and searching for new therapeutic target genes.