Research
We study the evolution and ecology of bivalve transmissible cancers across different species, exploring how malignant cells evolve to invade or ‘travel to’ distant organisms and, in some cases, even cross species boundaries. Our research combines fieldwork, molecular biology, and multiple omics to understand the ecological and evolutionary dynamics of these unusual cancers, which challenge our definitions of individuality and disease transmission.
Working in bivalves comes with unique challenges as they are not traditional model organisms in cancer research. But also provides extraordinary opportunities to discover new mechanisms of evolution of cancer cell transmission. More about contagious cancers
Ongoing research lines
- Origins and diversity of transmissible cancers in marine ecosystems.
- Evolutionary consequences of somatic cell transmission across individuals and species.
- Host–pathogen coevolution and immune escape mechanisms.
- Development of diagnostic tools for detection and monitoring of bivalve neoplasia in natural populations.
Resources
- Animal collection, to build a biobank of bivalve transmissible neoplasia.
- We collect and maintain bivalves to study their cancers through cytohistological and genomic approaches.
- Wet-laboratory, to explore marine cancer biology.
- Our lab is equipped for molecular and histological analyses, allowing us to process and diagnosse hundreds or thousands of samples, extract nucleic acids, and prepare libraries for sequencing.
- Bioinformatic platform, to generate high-quality insights.
- We use HPCs from the Max Planck Society to run pipelines and custom scripts to generate results.
Join us
We welcome motivated students and collaborators interested in cancer evolution, marine genomics, microbiology and ecology. If you would like to get involved in our research or learn more about our ongoing projects, please get in touch. Check if we have any open call right now!
Last update: Oct 2025