EDUCATION

Postdoc Institute of Cancer Research, Centre for Evolution and Cancer, London, UK, 2016-2020

Postdoc University of Manchester, Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health, Manchester, UK, 2012-2016

Ph.D Cancer Research UK Manchester Institute, Manchester, UK, 2008-2012

B.Sc Department of Biology, METU, Ankara, Turkey, 2002-2007

AREA OF RESEARCH

Precision Medicine and Drug Resistance in Cancer Laboratory aims to understand the underlying mechanisms of drug resistance in cancer. Our goal is to study how cancers evolve and develop resistance to therapies. We are interested in developing quantitative in vitro 2D/3D co-culture systems with stromal fibroblasts. We leverage single-cell barcoding and next-generation sequencing technologies to delineate actionable mechanisms of drug resistance. To better address patient specific drug resistance, we generate ex vivo Patient-Derived Organoids (PDOs) as a preclinical model system. Lastly, we are working on developing and optimising deep learning models for histopathological WSIs to enable the acquisition, management and extraction of the information that are crucial to decision making processes in cancer.

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

A. Acar, A. Hidalgo-Sastre, MK. Leverentz, CG. Mills, S. Woodcock, M. Baron, GM. Collu, K. Brennan “Inhibition of Wnt signalling by Notch via two distinct mechanisms” Scientific Reports, In Press (2021)

GD. Yalcin, N. Danisik, RC. Baygin, A. Acar “Systems biology and experimental model systems of Cancer” Journal of Personalized Medicine, 10.3390/jpm10040180 (2020).

G. Caravagna, T. Heide, M. Williams, L. Zapata, D. Nichol, K. Chkhaidze, W. Cross, GD. Cresswell, B Werner, A. Acar, CP. Barnes, G. Sanguinetti, TA. Graham, A. Sottoriva “Subclonal reconstruction of tumors using machine learning and population genetics” Nature Genetics,10.1038/s41588-020-0675-5 (2020).

A. Acar, D. Nichol, J. Fernandes-Mateos, G. Cressswell, I. Barozzi, SP. Hong, N. Trahearn, I. Spiteri, M. Stubbs, R. Burke, A. Stewart, G. Caravagna, B. Werner, G. Vlachogiannis, C. Maley, L. Magnani, N. Valeri, U. Banerji, A. Sottoriva “Exploiting evolutionary steering to induce collateral drug sensitivity in cancer” Nature Communications, 10.1038/s41467-020-15596 (2020).

Spiteri, G. Caravagna, G. Cresswell, A. Vatsiou, D. Nichol, A. Acar, L. Ermini, K. Chkhaidze, B.Werner, R. Mair, E. Brognara, G. Sanguinetti, SGM Piccirillo, C. Watts, A. Sottoriva “Evolutionary dynamics of residual disease in human glioblastoma” Annals of Oncology, 10.1093 (2019).