About Professor Iain Hagan

The inappropriate proliferation of cancer cells can arise from unchecked cell division, a failure to engage cell death pathways, or simultaneous changes in both. Understanding how the diverse cues are integrated to co-ordinate cell division and death is therefore key to understanding the biology of cancer. The Cell Division group study cell cycle controls that determine when a cell commits to the physical process of genome segregation, mitosis.

Because the regulatory networks that control cell division are highly conserved, we use both unicellular fission yeast and human cells in our investigations as the yeast work identifies core principles with which to frame questions to ask of the more complex context of human cell division. Our yeast work addresses how signals from the broad range of pathways are integrated by regulatory relays on neighbouring scaffolds on the centrosome to generate a single signal to trigger division when the time is right.

Complementary studies are asking whether similar controls operate in human cells and characterises one of the key cell cycle checkpoint molecules that determines when mitosis begins, PKMYT1.