Professor Adrian Bracken

Team/Members of the group:

• Dr Evan Healy  
• Rachel McCole
• Dr Eleanor Glancy  
• Dr Craig Monger 
• Dáire Gannon 
• James Nolan
• Orla Deevy
• Marlena Mucha 
• Dr Cheng Wang 
• Dr Amaranta Jimenez 
• Francesca Matra
• Ellen Tuck
• Darragh Nimmo
• Eimear Lagan
• Ademar Silva

Main Funders: 
Science Foundation Ireland, Irish Research Council, Irish Cancer Society

Active research programmes: 
The Bracken lab has made multiple important contributions understanding of the molecular mechanisms of how Polycomb group proteins regulate cell-fate decisions and cancer. Recently, they discovered a new family of vertebrate specific proteins that link nuclear receptor signalling and chromatin biology (Conway et al., Molecular Cell, 2018) and explored how different Polycomb complexes interplay to direct deposition of the H3K27me3 modification (Healy et al., Molecular Cell, 2019). The lab recently studied a devastating childhood cancer called ‘H3-K27M-mutant diffuse midline glioma’ and proposed a treatment strategy based on understanding the consequences of the oncogene on the underlying chromatin state (Brien et al., Nature Genetics, 2021). The lab is also focused on genetic predisposition to cancer and are using their expertise in chromatin biology to explore the contribution of the ‘non-coding genome’. Several exciting ongoing projects in the lab are studying the roles of chromatin regulators in developmental disorders and cancers.