Somatic mutations in respiratory diseases
My research focuses on somatic mutational processes and clonal evolution in chronic respiratory diseases, particularly idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis and cystic fibrosis. I am especially interested in identifying somatic mutations that contribute to disease pathogenesis or confer selective advantages within disease-specific tissue environments, and understanding their biological and clinical implications. I also study early-stage lung cancers and the mechanism of tobacco smoking-associated mutational signatures. My work combines Laser-captured microdissection and ultra-accurate duplex sequencing (NanoSeq), with increasing integration of cell biology and single-cell/spatial multi-omic approaches. I work closely with internal and external collaborators including Parasites and Microbes programme at Sanger, Quotient Therapeutics and UCL Respiratory Medicine.
Prior to my postdoctoral research, I completed an MSc in Cancer and a PhD in Cancer Genomics at the UCL Cancer Institute, where I developed computational methods to investigate subclonal copy number heterogeneity and analyse single-cell multi-omics data. I graduated from Peking University, Beijing, in 2017 with a dual degree in Medicine and Pure Mathematics.