Owen Sansom is known for his work determining the molecular hallmarks of colorectal cancer, including demonstrating the roles of the tumour suppressor protein APC and the WNT signalling pathway, as well as the involvement of intestinal stem cells in tumourigenesis.
10 Facts About Owen Sansom
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Owen Sansom was a postdoctoral fellow at Cardiff University investigating the role of the APC gene in Wnt signalling and cancer.
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In 2016, the Institute's Director, Professor Karen Vousden moved to the Francis Crick Institute and became CRUK's chief scientist, and Owen Sansom acted as interim Director of the Beatson Institute until being appointed as the next Director in 2017.
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Owen Sansom leads the CRUK Glasgow Centre, which aims to bring together scientists and clinicians to work together on cancer research, drug discovery and patient care.
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Owen Sansom was the first person to acutely delete the APC gene in the murine intestine, a model that he then used to elucidate the key pathways that APC controls in vivo.
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Owen Sansom's group showed that neutrophils are associated with the earliest stage of CRC, and using mouse models they showed that inhibition of the chemokine receptor CXCR2 could suppress both colitis and spontaneous cancer.
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Owen Sansom's group continued these studies into the pancreas to show that inhibition of CXCR2 suppresses metastasis in pancreatic cancer.
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In collaboration with Hans Clevers's laboratory, Owen Sansom's group showed that Lgr5-positive cells are an efficient cell of tumourigenesis.
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In 2007, Owen Sansom won the Young Scientist Frank Rose Award in recognition of his contributions to translational cancer research and in 2012 he was awarded the CRUK Future Leaders in Cancer Research Prize for his contributions to cancer research.
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Owen Sansom was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2012 and a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2017.