Prof Ian Tomlinson

Professor Ian Tomlinson

Population and Functional Genetics Laboratory
Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics
Oxford

Genes and bowel cancer

Professor Ian Tomlinson is Head of the Population and Functional Genetics Lab at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics in Oxford. His main research interest is cancer genetics, focusing particularly on the genes involved in bowel cancer.

Searching for bowel cancer genes

Professor Tomlinson's team is searching for natural variations in our genes that make people more likely to develop bowel cancer. They are also interested in how these gene variants act together with environmental factors to affect our risk of this disease.

In collaboration with the Cancer Research UK Colorectal Cancer Unit at St Mark's Hospital, Professor Tomlinson is carrying out the 'Colorectal tumour gene identification study' known as CORGI. They are collecting DNA samples from hundreds of families with a history of bowel cancer from all over the UK.

Professor Tomlinson is using these samples to identify faulty genes in these families. He will then look for the same genetic variations in the general population to see if they influence bowel cancer risk. The team have already discovered five common gene variants that can significantly increase a person's risk of bowel cancer.

This type of information could be used to regularly screen people at high risk of cancer. It may also help doctors choose the best treatment for each individual with bowel cancer according to the variations they carry.

Inherited bowel cancer

Professor Tomlinson is also studying people with the inherited syndrome 'Familial Adenomatous Polyposis' (FAP), which makes them more likely to develop bowel cancer. People with FAP inherit a faulty version of a gene called APC from one of their parents.

Using DNA taken from the tumours of FAP patients, the researchers are studying the APC gene to find out how bowel cancer develops in people with this syndrome. This work may also increase our understanding of how bowel cancer develops in sporadic cases of the disease in which mutations accumulate over the course of a lifetime instead of being inherited.

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