Michael Hendzel

Area of Study / Keywords

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About

Approximately 40% of Canadians are expected to have cancer at some point in their lives and approximately 25% of Canadians are expected to die of cancer.  It is only recently that modern biology has begun to impact upon the clinical treatment of cancer patients.  Despite early successes in so-called rationally designed therapy, much of the fundamental biology that provides the foundation for rationally designed therapy remains to be discovered and characterized.  My research laboratory investigates the basic biology of the genome and the cell nucleus, which houses the genome.  The maintenance of genome stability (mechanisms that ensure the faithful transmission of chromosome number of sequence content), the regulation of DNA double strand break repair, and the regulation of the genome through epigenetic mechanisms are being studied at the level of single cells with the objective of identifying mechanisms that have the potential to be translated into novel rationale therapies.  We are currently funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the National Cancer Institute of Canada, and the Alberta Cancer Board to study how the cell nucleus and chromatin function in normal and transformed (cancer) cells. 

Hansen J.C., Maeshima K., Hendzel M.J.

Epigenetics & Chromatin. 2021 December; 14 (1) 10.1186/s13072-021-00424-5

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Ali M.A.M., Garcia-Vilas J.A., Cromwell C.R., Hubbard B.P., Hendzel M.J., Schulz R.

FEBS LETTERS. 2021 January; 10.1111/febs.16061

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Strickfaden H., Tolsma T.O., Sharma A., Underhill D.A., Hansen J.C., Hendzel M.J.

CELL. 2020 December; 183 (7):1772-1784.e13 10.1016/j.cell.2020.11.027

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Barbour H., Daou S., Hendzel M., Affar E.B.

Nature Communications. 2020 December; 11 (1) 10.1038/s41467-020-19722-9