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Institute of Dentistry - Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry

Dr Ines Sequeira, MSc, AFHEA, PhD

Ines

Senior Lecturer in Oral and Skin Biology, Deputy Director of Research

Email: i.sequeira@qmul.ac.uk
Telephone: +44 (0)207 882 7007
Room Number: Blizard Building, 1st Floor
Website: http://www.sequeira.science/

Profile

Dr Inês Sequeira joined the Institute of Dentistry at Queen Mary University of London, in 2020 as a Lecturer. She has been studying stem cell and cancer biology for the past 18 years. Inês obtained her Biology degree at Lisbon University and Université Libre de Bruxelles and moved to Institut Pasteur in Paris to complete her doctoral studies. During her PhD, she worked with a multidisciplinary team to investigate stem cell heterogeneity and behaviour in the hair follicle using clonal analysis, 3D imaging and mathematical modelling, and establishing a novel model to describe stem cell behaviour in the niche during hair regeneration. In 2014, Inês moved to London and joined the laboratory of Prof Fiona Watt, one of the world-leading labs in skin and stem cell biology, at the Centre for Stem Cells & Regenerative Medicine (King’s College London) for her postdoctoral training on cancer biology. There, she developed her line of research using a mouse model for oral cancer (OSCC), establishing methodologies that were entirely new to the lab. During her postdoc, she uncovered a novel immunoregulatory role for Keratin 76 during tumour development. Furthermore, she focused in understanding the genetic and cellular heterogeneity in OSCC, correlating the genetic changes identified by whole exome sequencing with their location, clonal organisation and immune infiltrate changes of individual tumours in order to determine the dynamics of OSCC formation. This analysis opens new avenues to the development of new biomarker testing for early stage mutations, improving early diagnosis and monitoring of oral cancer.

Dr Sequeira’s lab at QMUL is particularly interested in dissecting the molecular and cellular mechanisms involved in oral cancer formation and in understanding the regenerative potential of the oral mucosa, a tissue with rapid and scarless healing when compared to skin. Inês and her team combine experimental and theoretical approaches including cutting-edge imaging with computational modelling to map the cellular interactions, and transcriptomics to uncover intrinsic and extrinsic signals during oral wound healing and tumour formation.

Dr Sequeira is also involved in the Barts Centre for Squamous Cancer which is a cross-institute collaborative centre at QMUL, bringing together research groups with diverse expertise from across the School of Medicine and Dentistry to tackle the problem of squamous cancer and drive clinical innovation.

Furthermore, to promote collaborative science, she co-founded the London Stem Cell Network (https://lscn.co.uk/) and currently coordinates the Oral and Craniofacial Bionetwork of the Human Cell Atlas (https://www.humancellatlas.org/biological-networks/).

Personal Webpage: www.sequeira.science

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/inesequeira

ResearchGate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ines_Sequeira

Centre: Oral Immunobiology and Regenerative Medicine

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