About Dr Sylvain Delaunay

Sylvain Delaunay received his BSc in Pharmacy (2010) and MSc in Pharmacy (2012) from the University of Liège in Belgium. In 2012, he started his PhD at the GIGA Institute (Liège, Belgium), under the supervision of Professor Pierre Close. During his PhD, he demonstrated that the Elongator complex, responsible for the mcm5s2U modification in cytosolic tRNAs, supports the synthesis of proteins driving breast cancer metastasis and drug resistance in melanoma. For this discovery, he was awarded the McKinsey Talented PhD Prize (2017) and the BSCDB Society PhD Prize (2018).

As a Postdoctoral Fellow, Sylvain subsequently joined the group of Professor Michaela Frye in the Department of Genetics at the University of Cambridge, to explore tRNA modifications in the mitochondria. In 2019, the laboratory relocated to the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) in Heidelberg, Germany. There, he identified that mitochondrial tRNA modifications are needed for synthesis of mitochondrial proteins, enabling cells to acquire motility and disseminate from the primary tumour. He went on to receive the Karl Freudenberg Award from the Academy of Sciences in Baden-Wurttemberg (2023).  Further to this, Sylvain also contributed to revealing the role of mitochondrial translation in resistance to AML treatment.

In January 2025, Sylvain joined the Cancer Research UK Manchester Institute as a Junior Group Leader to establish his RNA Dynamics in Cancer group. His group will focus on the characterisation of the mechanisms by which diet influences the dynamics of RNA to drive cell state transition in the tumour.