Naik Lab

Our laboratory has pioneered the study of Clonal Biology i.e. determining the cellular division and molecular differentiation events from single cells. We apply these approaches to the study of haematopoiesis, cancer, and development from stem cells.

We are a very technology-driven lab with the philosophy that studying Clonal Biology at different functional and molecular levels, and integrating this information using computational biology including AI/ML, will reveal the mechanisms behind their fate specification in health and disease.

Combined, we anticipate this suite of tools will allow us to gain a high-resolution understanding into the principles and molecular mechanisms governing development and the establishment of lineage fate in normal and cancerous tissues, with view to therapeutic interventions.

We also have an exciting Immunotherapy program leveraging type 1 Dendritic Cells (DC1s) that we hope to enter the clinic for colorectal and lung cancer within a few years.

We have several research interests in the lab that are helping to understand:

• The development of the immune-activating dendritic cell (DC) subsets from haematopoietic stem and progenitors
• Haematopoiesis using unique mouse models (LoxCode mice, which allow study of native haematopoiesis by in situ DNA barcoding)
• Haematopoiesis using unique human models (multilineage human Haematopoiesis using cyTOkines and Niches In Culture, HaemaTONIC)
• Cancer development, metastasis and drug resistance (leukaemia, breast cancer, other solid cancers)
• Developmental biology including fate specification during embryogenesis
• Immunology, including T and B cell fate specification

To discover the steps of how a stem cell divides and ultimately turns into cell types, tissues, organs or cancer, we interrogate the individual cells and clonal trajectories, rather than the population as a whole. This is akin to understanding the role of each player in a football team – not only the team’s result. To this end we have invested heavily in novel molecular tools, approaches and computational methods:

• Synthetic biology
• Cellular barcoding
• Cell division tracking
• Single cell, clonal and spatial multi-omics
• Computational tools
• Mathematical modelling
• Machine Learning approaches

Our ultimate goal is to redefine how biology is examined, and believe that studying biology through the lens of clones will lead to new insights never before achieved. We hope to unravel the clonal and molecular trajectories in haematopoiesis, cancer, development and immunology, with the goal of identifying new targets to enhance cell engineering for immune therapies and identify weak spots in cancer evolution for new therapies.