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Joseph Delaney PhD

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Rank
  • Associate Professor
College
  • College of Medicine
Department
  • Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
Academic Focus
  • Copy-number alterations in cancer
  • Development of user-friendly bioinformatics
  • Translational studies of ovarian cancer
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Locations

Office Location
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Biography

Research

The Delaney Lab primarily investigates the biogenesis and phenotypic effects of copy-number alterations in cancer.

Oncogenesis is normally thought of as a process that involves mutations within specific genes to drive tumor development and progression. However, bioinformatic analysis shows that about half of all tumors in certain types of cancer can have insufficient mutations to yield cancer. For example, 48% of serous ovarian cancers have a mutation in p53, a quintessential tumor suppressor gene, but no other driver mutation. Yet, up to two-thirds of the average ovarian cancer genome has a copy number alteration. Since few labs seek to understand how these alterations originate and contribute to cancer biology, we help to fill that niche.

Biography

Dr. Delaney graduated with a B.S. degree in Chemical Biology from the University of California at Berkeley in 2007. Dr. Delaney received his Ph.D. degree in Molecular and Cellular Biology from the University of Washington in 2012. His Ph.D. thesis under the mentorship of Dr. Matt Kaeberlein established new mechanisms of longevity regulation using yeast as a model organism. Dr. Delaney performed his post-doctoral cancer biology and DNA repair research at the University of California at San Diego and Duke University under the mentorship of Dr. Dwayne Stupack and Dr. Albert La Spada. Dr. Delaney was recruited to join the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the Medical University of South Carolina in 2018, where his laboratory researches the origins and effects of copy-number alterations in cancer.