Yoichiro Tamori
2005 Ph.D. (Developmental Biology) Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan.
2000 M.S. (Developmental Biology) Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan.
1998 B.S. (Biological Science) Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan.
My primary interests are in the cancer cell evolution. My current research focuses on how tumor invasion begins, how intratumor heterogeneity emerges, and how cooperative behavior evolves from heterogeneous cell groups. My lab uses the unique in vivo tumor model that I have developed in Drosophila melanogaster combining genetic experiments, single-cell analyses, and advanced microscopic techniques.
Cancer development is analogous to evolution, and similar constraints on the direction of evolution can be seen in cancer progression. Regardless of the type of causative genetic mutations or primary organs, they share many common phenotypes: dysplasia, hyperproliferation, invasion and metastasis, chromosomal number abnormalities, and intratumor heterogeneity.
Cancer arises from oncogenic mutant cells with malignant traits by accumulating multiple mutations. Therefore, cancer is generally thought to be a stochastic process in aging. Recent advanced genomic sequencing has confirmed that multiple oncogenic mutations accumulating in somatic cells increase with age, but in many cases these mutant cells do not develop tumors and the tissue remains healthy. In other words, the process of cancer development involves not only the stochastic accumulation of somatic mutations but also unknown inevitable factors.
Recent studies have also shown that cancer tissues typically contain diverse mutant cells and a high degree of genetic heterogeneity among cells. This has led us to understand cancer development in the context of clonal evolution, but how heterogeneity arises in actual tumor tissues and how heterogeneous cell populations initiate coordinated behaviors such as collective invasion are completely unknown. I utilize the Drosophila genetics-based in vivo tumor model that I have developed in my lab to investigate these fundamental questions in cancer biology.
E-mail: yoichiro.tamori@louisiana.edu
Website: https://www.morphomeostasis.com/