Eiríkur Steingrímsson laboratory focuses on how genetic regulators of normal development can also mediate diseases such as cancer and how they lead to phenotype plasticity. The laboratory primarily works on the transcription factor MITF which is essential for all steps of melanocyte development and differentation, including melanocyte stem cell maintenance.
MITF is also important in melanoma, a deadly type of skin cancer that arises from melanocytes. In melanoma cells, MITF acts as a switch that allows dividing tumour cells to become non-dividing migrant cells. This leads to metastasis to a new site where the cells can switch again to become proliferative tumour cells. How MITF mediates this switch is a major concern for therapeutic intervention. My laboratory is investigating this using several approaches. First we are investigating the role of the epigenetic regulators PRDM7 and SETDB2 in mediating the switch. These two genes are tightly regulated by MITF in melanoma and results from the lab indicate that in the presence of MITF they are involved in repressing the expression of genes involved in EMT. Second, we are characterizing how MITF regulates the expression of CDH1 and CDH2, two genes involved in the switching process. Third, we are investigating how the human melanoma-predisposing variant E318K leads to melanoma and how the carboxyl-end of MITF plays a role in this process. We use a multitude of methods in our work including genomics, proteomics, imaging and structural analysis in addition to using both cell and animal models.
Eiríkur Steingrímsson obtained his PhD in Biology from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1992 where he studied genes involved in development of the fruitfly Drosophila melanogaster. He then spent 4 years as a postdoc at the National Cancer Institute in Maryland where he studied regulatory processes in mammalian development. Since 1997 he has been professor at the University of Iceland where he has continued his work on regulatory processes, now focusing on the relationship between normal development and malignancy.
