Dr Jill Kucab In the early years of her career, Jill worked in preclinical drug discovery, studying kinase inhibitors as potential therapeutics for cancer. Later, as Jill became more interest in how cancer develops, she pursued a PhD in Environmental Carcinogenesis at the Institute of Cancer Research in London, studying mutations in TP53 caused by environmental contaminants.
In 2013, Jill began her postdoctoral work with Professor David Phillips at King's. As part of the COMSIG consortium (2013–2017), both collaborated with scientists from the Sanger Institute and the University of Cambridge to determine the genome-wide mutational signatures of over 40 environmental agents in human induced pluripotent stem cells.
Currently Jill is a Research Fellow working on a CRUK Grand Challenge project, 'Mutographs of Cancer', using human tissue-derived organoid models to expand upon our previous work. By identifying the mutational fingerprints of environmental carcinogens in experimental systems, Jill hopes to better understand the contribution of these factors to the mutations we observe human cancer.