The Heather Gardner Lab
My research efforts focus on dissecting drivers of osteosarcoma, using a comparative, cross-species approach with the goal of translating findings for the benefit of canine and human cancer patients.
The structurally complex genomic data in canine osteosarcoma underscore the notion that these variants play an integral role in this disease. However, the diversity of coding and non-coding variants creates challenges predicting the phenotype and clinical implications of these variants for patients. The focus of my laboratory is on dissecting the functional and epigenomic consequences, and therapeutic vulnerability of recurrent structurally complex mutations.
My specific laboratory projects include optimizing minimally invasive diagnostic tools such as liquid biopsy to identify predictive biomarkers associated with structural and epigenomic alterations that can be used to predict response to anti-cancer treatments prior to the development of metastatic disease.