Dr Jamie Blundell, MA, MSci, PhD. College Lecturer and Anthony L. Lyster Fellow in Biological Natural Sciences
I trained as a theoretical physicist at the Cavendish laboratory, University of Cambridge with Eugene Terentjev studying the statistical physics of polymers. I then moved to Stanford University in 2012 as a postdoctoral scholar working on the dynamics of clonal evolution with Daniel Fisher, Sasha Levy, Dmitri Petrov and Gavin Sherlock. I returned to Cambridge as a group leader in the Cambridge Cancer Centre Early Detection Programme in July 2017. My lab unites evolutionary modelling and genomic approaches to predict cancer risk from serial blood samples. More information about my research is available on my lab website
My research focuses on quantitatively understanding clonal evolution. To do this I use a combination of genetic lineage tracing experiments, "big data" analysis of deep sequencing data sets and mathematical/statistical models borrowed from population genetics and statistical physics. Clonal evolution underlies 30% of deaths worldwide including those caused by bacteria, fungi, parasites and cancer. However, our treatments of these diseases are often inadequate because they are not based on a quantitative understanding of the evolution that drives them. Currently my focus is on using longitudinal deep sequencing studies of blood to understand clonal evolution during the maintenance of healthy human tissue as well as its dysregulation in the earliest stages of cancer.
- Official Fellow
- Anthony L. Lyster Fellow in Natural Sciences