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About

Messenger RNA (or mRNA) is part of the central dogma of biology. RNA is enjoying a renaissance in both biology and medicine due to the efficacy of mRNA based therapeutics in treating COVID and holds tremendous promise for treating many diseases, including cancer.

We have a fundamental interest in uncovering how RNAs are transported from the nucleus to the cytoplasm and how this is altered in human disease.

While mRNA export is critical for gene expression, we and others have uncovered that mRNA export pathways are systematically amplified in cancer.

Through leveraging our curiosity driven work on export of mRNA from the nucleus and circular RNA, we are developing new RNA targeting therapies to treat cancer. 

Publications

Selected publications from Prof Vihandha Wickramasinghe

Williams TD, Michalak EM, Carey KT, Lam EYN, Anderson A, Griesbach E, Chan Y-C, Papasaikas P, Tan VWT, Ngo L, MacPherson L, Gilan O, Rucinski A, Rutkowska-Klute A, Zinn N, Grandi P, Bantscheff M, Prinjha RK, Dawson S-J, Chao JA, Wickramasinghe VO, Dawson MA. mRNA export factors store nascent transcripts within nuclear speckles as an adaptive response to transient global inhibition of transcription. Molecular Cell. 2025;85(1):10.1016/j.molcel.2024.12.008

Acera Mateos P, J Sethi A, Ravindran A, Srivastava A, Woodward K, Mahmud S, Kanchi M, Guarnacci M, Xu J, W S Yuen Z, Zhou Y, Sneddon A, Hamilton W, Gao J, M Starrs L, Hayashi R, Wickramasinghe V, Zarnack K, Preiss T, Burgio G, Dehorter N, E Shirokikh N, Eyras E. Prediction of m6A and m5C at single-molecule resolution reveals a transcriptome-wide co-occurrence of RNA modifications. Nature Communications. 2024;15(1):10.1038/s41467-024-47953-7

Ngo LH, Bert AG, Dredge BK, Williams T, Murphy V, Li W, Hamilton WB, Carey KT, Toubia J, Pillman KA, Liu D, Desogus J, Chao JA, Deans AJ, Goodall GJ, Wickramasinghe VO. Publisher Correction: Nuclear export of circular RNA. Nature. 2024;627(8005):10.1038/s41586-024-07281-8

Ngo LH, Bert AG, Dredge BK, Williams T, Murphy V, Li W, Hamilton WB, Carey KT, Toubia J, Pillman KA, Liu D, Desogus J, Chao JA, Deans AJ, Goodall GJ, Wickramasinghe VO. Nuclear export of circular RNA. Nature. 2024;627(8002):10.1038/s41586-024-07060-5

Smith LK, Parmenter T, Kleinschmidt M, Kusnadi EP, Kang J, Martin CA, Lau P, Patel R, Lorent J, Papadopoli D, Trigos A, Ward T, Rao AD, Lelliott EJ, Sheppard KE, Goode D, Hicks RJ, Tiganis T, Simpson KJ, Larsson O, Blythe B, Cullinane C, Wickramasinghe VO, Pearson RB, McArthur GA. Adaptive translational reprogramming of metabolism limits the response to targeted therapy in BRAFV600 melanoma. Nature Communications. 2022;13(1):10.1038/s41467-022-28705-x

Van Bergen NJ, Bell KM, Carey K, Gear R, Massey S, Murrell EK, Gallacher L, Pope K, Lockhart PJ, Kornberg A, Pais L, Walkiewicz M, Simons C, Flagship MRD, Wickramasinghe VO, White SM, Christodoulou J. Pathogenic variants in nucleoporin TPR (translocated promoter region, nuclear basket protein) cause severe intellectual disability in humans. Human Molecular Genetics. 2022;31(3):10.1093/hmg/ddab248

Hogg SJ, Motorna O, Cluse LA, Johanson TM, Coughlan HD, Raviram R, Myers RM, Costacurta M, Todorovski I, Pijpers L, Bjelosevic S, Williams T, Huskins SN, Kearney CJ, Devlin JR, Fan Z, Jabbari JS, Martin BP, Fareh M, Kelly MJ, Dupéré-Richer D, Sandow JJ, Feran B, Knight D, Khong T, Spencer A, Harrison SJ, Gregory G, Wickramasinghe VO, Webb AI, Taberlay PC, Bromberg KD, Lai A, Papenfuss AT, Smyth GK, Allan RS, Licht JD, Landau DA, Abdel-Wahab O, Shortt J, Vervoort SJ, Johnstone RW. Targeting histone acetylation dynamics and oncogenic transcription by catalytic P300/CBP inhibition. Molecular Cell. 2021;81(10):10.1016/j.molcel.2021.04.015

Goodall GJ, Wickramasinghe VO. RNA in cancer. Nature Reviews Cancer. 2021;21(1):10.1038/s41568-020-00306-0

Chappaz S, Law CW, Dowling MR, Carey KT, Lane RM, Ngo LH, Wickramasinghe VO, Smyth GK, Ritchie ME, Kile BT. Germline heterozygous mutations in Nxf1 perturb RNA metabolism and trigger thrombocytopenia and lymphopenia in mice. Blood Advances. 2020;4(7):10.1182/bloodadvances.2019001323

Briese M, Haberman N, Sibley CR, Faraway R, Elser AS, Chakrabarti AM, Wang Z, König J, Perera D, Wickramasinghe VO, Venkitaraman AR, Luscombe NM, Saieva L, Pellizzoni L, Smith CWJ, Curk T, Ule J. A systems view of spliceosomal assembly and branchpoints with iCLIP. Nature Structural & Molecular Biology. 2019;26(10):10.1038/s41594-019-0300-4

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