Meet the jury: ‘Somatic Mutations in Aging and Disease’ (Prof Peter Campbell) & ‘Dissecting Mechanisms of Tumor Suppression by Imaging Live Mice’ (Prof. Sara Gallini)

Venue: Gasthuisberg O&N4 auditorium
Date and time: 24 April 2026, 11:00–12:30

Prof. Peter Campbell will present his work on Somatic Mutations in Aging and Disease, and Prof. Sara Gallini will present Dissecting Mechanisms of Tumor Suppression by Imaging Live Mice.

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About the lecture: Somatic Mutations in Aging and Disease (Prof Peter Campbell)

Somatic mutations accumulate in cells throughout life and are increasingly recognized as important contributors to aging, cancer, and other disease processes. In this lecture, Peter Campbell will discuss how the study of somatic mutations can reveal the genetic changes cells acquire over time and what these changes can teach us about tissue biology, clonal evolution, and disease. His work has focused in particular on cancer genomics, genome-wide analyses of somatic mutations in tumors, and the broader role of somatic mutations outside cancer.

About the speaker

Peter Campbell is CSO & Academic Cofounder at Quotient Therapeutics. He previously served as Head of Cancer, Aging, and Somatic Mutation at the Wellcome Sanger Institute, where his research focused on the genetic changes cells acquire throughout life and how these mutations relate to aging, cancer, and other disease processes.

About the lecture: Dissecting Mechanisms of Tumor Suppression by Imaging Live Mice (Prof Sara Gallini)

How healthy tissues respond to oncogenic cells is a central question in cancer biology. In this lecture, Sara Gallini will discuss research aimed at defining the cellular and molecular mechanisms that govern competition between healthy and oncogenic cells in vivo. Using the skin epithelium as a model system, her work combines in vivo two-photon imaging of living mice with high-throughput single-cell transcriptomic and proteomic analyses to track and manipulate cells over time and identify therapeutic targets to suppress and treat cancer.

About the speaker

Sara Gallini is a Tenure Track Assistant Professor at EPFL in ISREC, where she leads the Gallini Lab. Her research focuses on the cellular and molecular mechanisms controlling competition between healthy and oncogenic cells in vivo, using live-mouse imaging and multi-omic approaches to study cancer development and tumor suppression.

Contact info: hasse<dot>mol<at>kuleuven<dot>be