The Barts Centre for Squamous Cancer has recently recruited Dr Gernot Walko and Dr Ana Caetano to QMUL, as new faculty to help drive forward our vision for a centre of excellence in squamous cancer research.
Gernot Walko (left) and Ana Caetano (right)
Gernot Walko (Magister rer. nat., Doctor rer. nat) received his undergraduate and postgraduate training in microbiology and molecular biology from the University of Vienna, Austria. He did his PhD in molecular cell biology in the lab of Prof Gerhard Wiche, where his research focused on the roles of cytoskeletal linker proteins in the context of human skin blistering diseases. Following initial postdoctoral training in Vienna, Dr Walko moved to London in 2013, supported a prestigious Marie Curie Intra-European Fellowship, to join the world-leading stem cell lab of Prof Fiona Watt at the newly opened Centre for Stem Cells and Regenerative Medicine at King’s College London where his research focused on the molecular mechanisms controlling self-renewal of human epidermal stem cells. In April 2018, Dr Walko became Lecturer and Principal Investigator in the Department of Biology and Biochemistry (now Department of Life Sciences) at the University of Bath, UK. There, supported by research grants from the BBSRC, Academy of Medical Sciences, Royal Society, and the British Skin Foundation, his research group has been studying epidermal stem cells in healthy and diseased skin, with a special focus on the Hippo/YAP/TAZ signalling pathway and its role in skin cancer. In October 2022, Dr Walko joined the Centre for Oral Immunobiology and Regenerative Medicine and the Bart's Centre for Squamous Cancer, where his group will continue their work on Hippo/YAP/TAZ signalling with a focus on squamous cancers.
Ana Caetano did her PhD with Professor Paul Sharpe at King’s College London funded by the BBSRC-Unilever to understand the human oral mucosa cellular diversity in response to disease. This work revealed novel cellular populations responsible for chronic inflammation. During her time at King’s, Ana further developed a large-scale spatial transcriptomic pipeline to map oral mucosa gene expression in situ. Ana was awarded a Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science Post-Doctoral Fellowship to work with Dr Hironobu Fujiwara at the RIKEN Center for Biosystems Dynamics Research. Ana is also a qualified dentist and obtained her undergraduate dentistry degree in Lisbon.
In 2023, Ana was appointed a clinical senior lecturer within the Centre for Immunobiology and Regenerative Medicine. Her research aims to explore how the complex networks of neurons and glia are established in oral mucosa development, how they maintain tissue homeostasis and their role in tumour initiation. Her research team is interested in using large-scale approaches to discover cellular pathways affected in squamous cancer.