Melissa Fullwood

Dr. Melissa J. Fullwood is a Nanyang Assistant Professor in the School of Biological Sciences in NTU, with a joint appointment as a Principal Investigator in the Cancer Science Institute of Singapore. She completed her undergraduate degree in Biological Sciences in 2005 at Stanford University and her PhD with the National University of Singapore Graduate School for Integrative Sciences and Engineering (NGS) in 2009. She did her postdoctoral training at Duke-NUS, and then was a Special Fellow at the Cancer Science Institute.

She joined School of Biological Sciences in NTU in 2015. She was one of three recipients of the inaugural L’Oreal-UNESCO for Women in Science National Fellowships in Singapore in 2009, and was the international winner of the GE and Science prize in 2010. In 2013, she received the National Research Foundation (NRF) fellowship. In 2014, she received the A STAR/SNAS Young Scientist Award.

Research Statement

Precision cancer medicine relies on understanding the individual workings of each cancer and person in order to develop tailored therapies. We are interested in the mechanisms by which the non-coding “dark matter” of the human genome could be functional. One mechanism is through long-range chromatin interactions with target genes. Chromatin interactions are regions of the genome that are far apart in the linear genome sequence but come together in close 3-dimensional spatial proximity, may constitute common mechanisms for gene regulation.

Our lab’s main hypothesis is that epigenetic factors, transcription factors, and non-coding RNA are mutated in cancer, leading to dysregulation of chromatin interactions and consequent dysregulated transcription. This suggests that therapies targeting epigenetics and RNA may have the potential to treat cancer.

Research one-liner

Understanding 3-D genome organization and transcription regulation in order to develop cancer therapies.