ProfessorSimak Ali

Simak Ali leads the hormone-dependent cancer transcriptional research programme in the Department of Surgery & Cancer. His main interests are in defining mechanisms of steroid hormone receptor action, with special focus on mechanisms of resistance to hormonal therapies and development of new therapeutic approaches for the treatment of therapy-resistant breast and prostate cancer.

Through the use of proteomic and transcriptomic methods and cell and molecular biology approaches, Dr Ali is seeking to understand mechanisms of resistance to hormone therapies and develop new therapeutic strategies. Highlights include the a drug discovery effort directed at identifying inhibitors of estrogen receptor (ER) directed transcriptional programmes for treatment of hormone therapy-resistant breast cancer. This work has yielded a first-in-class cancer drug targeting cyclin-dependent kinase-7 (CDK7), named Samuraciclib. Samuraciclib has progressed to clinical trials for estrogen receptor (ER) positive breast cancer in combination with hormone therapies and for triple-negative breast cancer in combination with chemotherapy.