Research program

Replication Stress & Genome Stability

Understanding how transcription, replication, and DNA repair intersect in cancer.

We investigate transcription-replication conflicts and replication stress, and how cancer cells engage DNA-damage signaling and repair pathways to survive these challenges.

Transcription-Replication Conflicts
ABL1
Replication Stress
Replication Forks
DNA Repair
Chromatin

ABL kinase sits between oncogenic stress, R-loops, and the replication fork; its inhibition drives transcription-replication conflicts. Gu et al., Cell Reports 2026.

Key publications

ABL kinase inactivation induces transcription-replication conflicts and impairs replication fork progression in metastatic small cell lung cancer
Gu JJ, Scott KM, Ghosh A, Barbier RH, Rouse DC, Hoj JP, Caminear MW, Zhang F, Gao B, Barbier MW, Zou L, Lan L, Pendergast AM
Cell Rep · 2026
DOI PubMed
Multifaceted roles of PDS5B in RAD51-dependent homology-directed DNA repair and replication fork protection
Katz JN, Samentar L, Fang Q, Ji JH, Li W, Gao Q, Kuppa S, Gao B, Rogers CM, Kaur H, Shabestari AB, Dutta A, Syed S, Tovar M, Tomimatsu N, Mukherjee B, Irvin EM, Zhou S, Habib AA, Libich DS, Hromas R, Mazin AV, Rao MK, Olsen SK, Wasmuth EV, Losada A, Zhou D, Wang H, Lan L, Greene EC, Zhao W, Kwon Y, Burma S, Sung P
Nat Commun · 2026
DOI PubMed
DSS1 restrains BRCA2's engagement with dsDNA for homologous recombination, replication fork protection, and R-loop homeostasis
Huang Y, Li W, Foo T, Ji JH, Wu B, Tomimatsu N, Fang Q, Gao B, Long M, Xu J, Maqbool R, Mukherjee B, Ni T, Alejo S, He Y, Burma S, Lan L, Xia B, Zhao W
Nat Commun · 2024
DOI PubMed

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