Michael S. Email & Phone Number

Professor Michael Samuel is a cancer biologist with an interest in the interactions between the tumour and its biomechanical microenvironment. Specifically, he is interested in the mechanisms by which tumours modify their extra-cellular matrix in order to promote their growth and dissemination. Michael completed his Bachelor’s degree with Honours in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the Australian National University, Canberra. He then moved to Melbourne to conduct Ph.D. research at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, in the laboratory of Prof. Matthias Ernst. Here he studied the function of DNA methyltransferase dysregulation in intestinal cancers, showing that increased DNA methyltransferase activity has a causal role in tumour progression.Moving to the Beatson Institute for Cancer Research, UK in 2006 to join the laboratory of Prof. Michael Olson as a postdoctoral scientist, Michael began working on the cytoskeletal signalling pathways that have absorbed his interest over the past 10 years. During this time, he established novel models of conditionally active cytoskeletal signalling to demonstrate that these pathways regulate tissue-level mechanical changes that promote tumour growth and progression.In 2011, Michael won a Florey Fellowship to move back to Australia and in 2012, he set up the Tumour Microenvironment Laboratory at the Centre for Cancer Biology with funding from a National Health and Medical Research Council New Investigator grant. He is an ARC Future Fellow and his research group uses in vivo models of signalling and cancer to elucidate the mechanisms by which biochemical and biomechanical pathways interact to drive tumour progression, with a focus on epithelial cancers.