25-11-2026

From normal tissue to cancer: using somatic genomics to understand hereditary tumour risk

Dr Joe Christopher is a clinician scientist based in Cambridge, UK. He splits his time between the care of patients as a Resident in Clinical Genetics in the East Anglian Medical Genetics Service at Addenbrooke's Hospital and research as an Academic Clinical Lecturer in the Somatic Genomics Programme at the Wellcome Sanger Institute. His research and specialty clinical interest is in hereditary cancer risk and its management.

It is now well established that normal human tissues accumulate somatic mutations throughout life, with positively selected mutant clones present long before any malignancy develops. This webinar will introduce the key concepts underpinning this rapidly evolving field before exploring what somatic mutation patterns in normal tissues reveal specifically in the context of hereditary tumour syndromes – including findings in carriers of germline mutations in BRCA1/2, TP53, NF1, mismatch repair genes (Lynch syndrome), and POLE/POLD1. The webinar will also present data from two ongoing studies in this space: LiFTS (the Li-Fraumeni Over Time Study), which tracks longitudinal somatic mutations in individuals with Li-Fraumeni syndrome, and RECCE-PTEN, an investigation of somatic mutation in PTEN hamartoma tumour syndrome.

Registration: https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/4448898278673813591