Lynne Postovit

Biography

Dr. Postovit is the Sawin-Baldwin Chair in Ovarian Cancer and an Associate Adjunct Professor in the Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology. Her Primary Appointment is Associate Professor in the Department of Oncology, University of Alberta. 

Research Interest

Bidirectional communication between cells and their microenvironment is a hallmark of both cancer progression and embryological development. Indeed, in all physiological instances, cells do not survive autonomously, but rather rely on extracellular cues to direct functions as diverse as proliferation, apoptosis, invasion and differentiation. The past decade has seen an explosion of research on cells with the capacity to differentiate in response to specific microenvironmental cues. During embryogenesis, these "stem cells" are the source of all cell lineages and in adulthood they function in tissue repair and rejuvenation. Recent studies have found that cancers may similarly develop from stem cell populations, and that these rarely occurring cells care likely responsible for tumour formation, drug resistance and metastasis. The unifying goal of our research program is to determine what types of microenvironments regulate normal and cancer stem cell plasticity and function, and to elucidate the mechanisms by which such microenvironments elicit their effects. Put in another way, we are interested in epigenetics; or how the microenvironment can regulate cell function by changing which genes can be expressed.  Ultimately, these studies will lead to the development of methods to maintain normal stem cell pluripotency and to inhibit cancer cell plasticity and metastasis.