Our current team members
Welcome to our team of dedicated researchers who are passionate about unraveling the mechanisms of the most fundamental process in biology.
Prof. Corrado Santocanale
Principal Investigator
Corrado Santocanale received his Ph.D. in Cellular and Molecular Biology from the University of Milan, Italy under the co-supervision of Paolo Plevani and Giovanna Lucchini. As a postdoctoral fellow at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund (now Cancer Research UK) in John Diffley’s laboratory, Corrado studied the mechanisms that control the initiation of DNA replication uncovering the “origin firing checkpoint”, a pathway that prevents the activation of late firing origins in response to the inhibition of replication elongation or DNA damage. In 1999 Corrado joined Pharmacia Upjohn (subsequently Pharmacia Corp. Pfizer and Nerviano Medical Sciences) to lead a preclinical drug discovery program aimed at discovering and developing CDC7 kinase inhibitors as anti-cancer therapeutics. In 2007 Corrado moved to Galway to start an academic lab in NUIG. The primary interest of the lab is studying the mechanisms of DNA replication in human cells and exploiting the results in this field for therapeutic purposes.
Dr. Micheal Rainey
Senior Postdoctoral Researcher
Michael obtained his B.Sc in biochemistry and M. Res. from the University of Manchester, UK. He then went on to complete a Ph.D. at the Beatson Institute for Cancer Research and the University of Glasgow where he investigated the role of DNA integrity checkpoint pathways in cell cycle regulation and cancer. Michael’s interest in the DNA damage response pathways continued as a Post-doctoral Fellow in the Laboratory of Prof. Michael Kastan, St Jude’s Hospital, Memphis, USA characterizing novel small molecule inhibitors of ATM kinase. Michael joined the Santocanale lab in 2008 and has The main focus of Michael’s work currently is understanding how human breast cancer cells respond to CDC7 kinase inhibition and what the genetic determinants are that affect responses. Using CRISPR/Cas9 genome-wide screening approaches he aims to identify novel genetic interactions, that will advance our understanding of how CDC7 regulates DNA replication, and genetic vulnerabilities that can be exploited by therapeutic strategies.
Daniel Shamavu
Ph.D. Student Researcher
Daniel obtained his B.Sc in Immunology in Trinity College Dublin. His thesis focused on how the immunometabolism of macrophages can be regulated by metabolites derived from the TCA cycle. He joined Prof. Santocanale’s in October 2021 as a Research Master’s student. He is now a PhD candidate and his project focuses on uncovering how the cellular activity of CDC7 inhibitors is modulated by cyclin dependent kinases.
Hannah Mc Grane
Master Student Researcher
Hannah obtained her B.Sc in Biochemistry from the University of Galway in 2023. Throughout her studies, Hannah developed a keen interest in DNA replication and in the processes underpinning cell division. In September 2023, Hannah joined Prof. Santocanale’s Lab as a Research Masters Student. Other areas of interest include science communication and outreach.
Bernard Stefanus
Ph.D. Student Researcher
Stefanus Bernard is a PhD researcher funded by SFI Centre for Research Training in Genomics Data Science. He obtained his B.Sc. in Bioinformatics from the Indonesia International Institute for Life Sciences (i3L) at Jakarta, Indonesia. He originally developed interest in cancer genomics. However, during the COVID-19 pandemic and in his final year, he spent most of his time in the research of SARS-CoV-2. His thesis focused on the bioinformatics pipelines for the analysis of SARS-CoV-2. This led him to join GSI Lab to assist the COVID-19 genomic surveillance in Indonesia for nearly a year before moving to Ireland to pursue his PhD. As team member in this lab he is pursuing his original passion in cancer genomics. His project focuses on the functional genomics analysis of potential drug candidates for cancer therapy using the combination of genome-wide CRISPR/Cas9 knock-out screens and a next-generation sequencing approaches.
Anna Mirabello
Erasmus+ Student Researcher
Anna Maria has a BSc degree in Biotechnology from University of Messina (IT) and she is now in her last year of the Master’s degree in Biomedical Biotechnology. Under the Erasmus mobility programme, Anna Maria is learning the techniques of molecular and cellular biology while performing the experimental work related to the cellular responses to CDC7 kinase inhibition.
Alumni:
PhD at Unviersity of Galway, IE
Together in the years:
