Deborah Goberdhan's Biography

Deborah Goberdhan, Associate Professor of Cell Signalling, University of Oxford

Deborah Goberdhan read Chemistry at Oxford, before working at Harvard and MIT, where she developed an interest in using flies to understand the genetics of human disease. During her doctoral studies she discovered that the fly homologue of the recently identified tumour suppressor PTEN has a specific role in blocking cell growth. Her research group at Oxford uses complementary approaches in flies and human cancer cells to study cancer-related questions. It has had a long-term interest in understanding the roles of intracellular amino acid transporters in sensing their local environment to regulate the mTORC1 master controller of cellular growth and metabolism. Deborah is now leading a Cancer Research UK Programme focused on understanding the role of mTORC1 signalling in controlling the production of different types of exosome. She combines mechanistic analysis in human cancer cells with high-resolution in vivo studies using a fly model to do this, and with strong clinical collaborations, is developing several translational aspects of this work.