Dr. Andrews’ research contributed substantially to our understanding of the function of Bcl-2 family proteins and the molecular mechanisms by which they regulate chemotherapy responses. His lab is applying this knowledge to patient samples for the development of new precision medicine approaches. His lab uses automated imaging and machine learning techniques developed to analyze the response of cells from patients to different drug combinations. To enable effective translation, he identified culture and imaging conditions that faithfully mimic micro-environmental signals that confer drug resistance in patients. The Andrews lab is currently carrying studies to optimize the use of inhibitors of anti-apoptosis proteins to kill cancer in patients. The lab has also devised and patented new methods for generating patient derived organoids that are more amenable to high content screening than more commonly used methods.
Dr. Andrews’ development of new fluorescence spectroscopy, fluorescence lifetime imaging microscopy fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FLIM FRET) and high content screening techniques allowed us to generate new insights into how cancer cells respond to chemotherapy and revealed new attributes of drugs currently in clinical trials. He has also used high content screening to identify new small molecules that inhibit and activate protein-protein interactions between Bax and Bak for development as drugs to treat neurodegeneration and inhibitors of the oncoprotein MYC binding to selected partner proteins as new cancer drugs. Thus, he has developed an arsenal of tools with which to study protein-protein interactions that can be applied generally to early-stage drug discovery applications.
Education
- B.Sc., 1979, Biochemistry, University of Ottawa, Canada
- Ph.D., 1985, Medical Biophysics, University of Toronto, Canada
- Post Doc, 1988, Cell Physiology, University of California, San Francisco, USA
Appointments & Affiliations
- Senior Scientist, Biological Sciences, Odette Cancer Research Program, Sunnybrook Research Institute
- Professor, Departments of Biochemistry and Medical Biophysics, University of Toronto
Research Foci
- Automated image processing
- Biophysics
- Cell and molecular biology
- Early-stage drug discovery
- High content analysis and image-based screening
- Precision oncology