The Anna-Katerina Hadjantonakis Lab

Cancer is a condition promoted by cells undergoing an identity crisis. An understanding of how cells control their identity (cell fate specification), and how they organize themselves into normal tissues (morphogenesis) provides the blueprint for the fundamental biological processes that become deregulated in cancer. 

The Hadjantonakis laboratory uses high-resolution quantitative methods to investigate the mechanisms underlying stem cell specification, cellular differentiation, tissue organization and growth. They use the mammalian embryo as a platform, and the mouse as a primary model system. They also exploit in vitro cultured stem cells, including pluripotent stem cells, for their studies.