Much of Dr. Thomas Belbin’s recent research has focused on the identification of novel genes that were the subject to epigenetic silencing by aberrant DNA methylation in head and neck cancer (HNSCC) and other cancers.

Of particular interest is his research at Memorial on three novel ZNF proteins (ZNF132, ZNF154 and ZNF671) that are known to be hypermethylated at a high frequency in HNSCC as well as in other epithelial solid tumours. He and his team have shown that all three have prognostic significance in HNSCC. They hope to continue the work in identifying not only downstream targets of these novel genes, but to elucidate the manner in which these genes regulate each other, particularly the newly identified ZNF671. One goal of his future research will be a characterization of the tumour suppressive properties of ZNF671 in HNSCC cell lines. These projects will be a collaboration with Dr. Touati Benoukraf and Dr. Michael Leitges, both Canada Research Chairs in Memorial University’s Faculty of Medicine.

In addition, his group is beginning a study to compare the microbiome environment in oral squamous cell cancers from Newfoundland, and to compare those to the oral cancer cohort at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. This project will utilize the newly developed long reads sequencer (Oxford Nanopore) available in his lab. To characterize the microbiome, he will use a combination of publicly available software (MinKNOW, Bowtie, Blast, Megablast), and custom scripts developed by Dr. Benoukraf’s group for base calling, read alignment and strain characterization. This project will be one of the first to study the role of the oral microbiome in squamous cell cancers of the mouth.

Areas of Research: Apoptosis and Cancer, Epigenomics, Bioinformatics, Cancer Diagnosis and Detection, Cell Signaling and Cancer, Head and Neck Cancer