Nicholas Dyson, PhD, is a Saltonstall Scholar at the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center and a professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Dyson received his PhD from the University of Manchester and reached Boston by way of Amersham International, PLC, a health science company, and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.
Dr. Dyson is a senior scientist at Mass General’s Center for Cancer Research in Charlestown, Mass., where he directs a cutting-edge laboratory. A geneticist, Dr. Dyson has made breakthroughs in our understanding of how cells divide — both the regulated division of a normal cell and the abnormal proliferation of a malignant cancer. By using the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster as a genetic model organism, Dr. Dyson has uncovered basic cellular mechanisms that are harder to discern in more complicated human cells.
These findings have the potential to guide the design of novel genetically focused therapies for many cancers, including breast cancer, a disease that has afflicted Dr. Dyson’s family.
