Alex Petukhova-Greenstein

Research Interest
I am interested in germline and somatic variants, particularly in the non-coding regions of the genome, in colorectal cancer and Lynch syndrome-associated cancers, as well as the role of alternative splicing events in tumor biology. Cancer-specific splicing events aberrantly expressed transcripts represent a new category of neoantigens beyond well-characterised mutational targets, and provide potential to modulate antitumor immunitity ans serve as novel targets for vaccine development. 

Research objectives
1. Define the genomic landscape and likely causes of alternative splicing in colorectal precancer and cancer.  
2. Delineate dysregulation of regulatory, trans-acting factors in precancerous and cancerous lesions.
3. Integrate these data with multimodal analyses to understand their relationship with coding alterations and potential as reventative and therapeutic targets.

Background 
I completed my medical training at Charité University in Berlin, Sorbonne University in Paris, and Northwestern University in Chicago. During medical school, I spent one year conducting research on liver cancer imaging for my MD thesis at Yale University. My work focused on predictive magnetic resonance imaging features in liver cancer, integrating computational modelling and machine learning algorithms to identify radiologist-defined and computer-derived “radiomic” features. 

Prior to starting my DPhil, I worked as a resident doctor in Clinical Genetics at Charité University, specialising in hereditary cancers and performing whole-genome sequencing analyses for patients with rare diseases.