Masato Inoue

Research interests

I am a DPhil student in the Song lab since October 2019. My primary interest is the early diagnosis of cancer. Cancer is caused by the combination of genetic and epigenetic abnormalities. Accordingly, detecting these abnormalities has a great potential for diagnosing cancer. Among modifications that can change in cancer cells, I am focusing on two types of epigenetic modifications; 5mC and 5hmC. 5mC is a methylated cytosine and 5hmC is an oxidized form of 5mC. These modifications regulate gene expression and therefore are associated with cancer. Our lab has recently developed a novel method to detect 5mC and 5hmC at single-base resolution. I am optimising and trying to apply the method to DNA collected from cancer patients. My goal is to create an algorithm that can diagnose cancer by analysing the patterns of 5mC and 5hmC.

Background

I did my undergraduate and master’s studies in Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of Tokyo. I specialised in molecular biology and researched the relationship between cell volume and cell death with a particular focus on kinase and channel proteins.