Prof Darran O'Connor
Email：darranoconnor@rcsi.com
Tel: +353 1 402 2596
Add: 123 St Stephens Green, Dublin 2
Biography
Prof O’Connor is Head of the School of Postgraduate Studies and a molecular oncologist who obtained his PhD from Trinity College Dublin in 2000. Subsequently, he conducted his postdoctoral training in cancer biology at Columbia University, New York and the University of Glasgow under the supervision of Prof Nick La Thangue, FRSE. He also spent addition time as a Visiting Fellow at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute/Harvard Medical School and the Netherlands Cancer Institute where he joined the group of Prof Rene Bernards. Darran returned to Ireland in 2004 as a HRB Career Development Fellow. In 2009 he was employed as a Research Fellow in Cancer Biology at UCD within the School of Biomolecular and Biomedical Science and appointed as Senior Lecturer in Cancer Biology within SBBS in 2013. He moved his research group to RCSI in August 2015. Darran's team (funded by SFI, The European Commission, The Susan G Komen Foundation, The Irish Cancer Society and The Irish Research Council) has extensive experience in the discovery of molecular determinants of cancer progression (via transcriptomic/functional genomic profiling), functional analysis using in vitro and xenograft models, and their clinical translation utilizing tissue microarrays. He was elected to the council of the Irish Association for Cancer Research in 2011 and awarded the 9th St Luke's Young Investigator award in 2012. Other prestigious awards include fellowships from the European Molecular Biology Organisation and the Human Frontiers Science Programme. Publications: 60 peer reviewed papers to date, including in Nature Cell Biology, Nature Reviews Cancer, Nature Communications, Journal of Clinical Oncology, JNCI, Clinical Cancer Research & Cancer Research among others.
Recent Publications
1. Predictive modelling of response to neoadjuvant therapy in HER2+ breast cancer. [Journal Article] Cosgrove N, Eustace A, O'Donovan P, Madden S, Moran B, Crown J, Moulton B, Morris P, Grogan L, Breathnach O, Power C, Allen M, Walshe JM, Hill A, Blümel A, O'Connor D, Das S, Milewska M, Fay J, Kay E, Toomey S, Hennessy B, Furney S Published 27 Sep 2023
2. Implementing subtype-specific pre-clinical models of breast cancer to study pre-treatment aspirin effects. [Journal Article] Miller I, Khan S, Shiels L, Das S, O'Farrell AC, Connor K, Lafferty A, Moran B, Isella C, Loadman P, Conroy E, Cohrs S, Schibli R, Kerbel RS, Gallagher WM, Marangoni E, Bennett K, O'Connor D, Dwyer RM, Byrne A Published 17 Apr 2022
3. Master transcription regulators and transcription factors regulate immune-associated differences between patients of African and European ancestry with colorectal cancer. [Journal Article] Myer PA, Kim H, Blümel A, Finnegan E, Kel A, Thompson TV, Greally JM, Prehn J, O'Connor D, Friedman RA, Floratos A, Das S Published 27 Jan 2022
4. Prognostic value of the 6-gene OncoMasTR test in hormone receptor–positive HER2-negative early-stage breast cancer: comparative analysis with standard clinicopathological factors. [Journal Article] Lynch SM, Russell NM, Barron S, Wang C-JA, Loughman T, Dynoodt P, Fender B, Lopez-Ruiz C, O'Grady A, Sheehan K, Fay J, Amberger-Murphy V, Saha A, Klinger R, Gonzalez CA, Al-Attar N, Rahman A, O'Leary D, Lanigan FT, Bracken AP, Crown J, Kelly CM, O'Connor D, Gallagher WM Published 2 Jun 2021
5. An insight into the driver mutations and molecular mechanisms underlying mucinous adenocarcinoma of the rectum. [Journal Article] Reynolds I, O'Connell E, Fichtner M, Blümel A, Mason SE, Kinross J, McNamara D, Kay E, O'Connor D, Das S, Burke J, Prehn J Published 1 Jun 2021
6. Effects of HER family-targeting tyrosine kinase inhibitors on antibody-dependent cell-mediated cytotoxicity in HER2-expressing breast cancer. [Journal Article] Collins DM, Madden S, Gaynor N, AlSultan D, Gal ML, Eustace AJ, Gately KA, Hughes C, Davies AM, Mahgoub T, Ballot J, Toomey S, O'Connor D, Gallagher WM, Holmes FA, Espina V, Liotta L, Hennessy B, O'Byrne KJ, Hasmann M, Bossenmaier B, O'Donovan N, Crown J Published 1 Feb 2021
7. Multiple screening approaches reveal HDAC6 as a novel regulator of glycolytic metabolism in triple-negative breast cancer. [Journal Article] Dowling CM, Hollinshead KER, Grande AD, Pritchard J, Zhang H, Dillon ET, Haley K, Papadopoulos E, Mehta AK, Bleach R, Lindner AU, Mooney B, Duessmann H, O'Connor D, Prehn J, Wynne K, Hemann M, Bradner JE, Kimmelman AC, Guerriero JL, Cagney G, Wong K-K, Letai AG, Chonghaile TN Published 15 Jan 2021
8. A functional genomic screen identifies the deubiquitinase USP11 as a novel transcriptional regulator of ERa in breast cancer. [Journal Article] Dwane L, O'Connor AE, Das S, Moran B, Mulrane L, Pinto-Fernandez A, Ward E, Blümel A, Cavanagh B, Mooney B, Dirac AM, Jirström K, Kessler BM, Chonghaile TN, Bernards R, Gallagher WM, O'Connor D Published 15 Nov 2020
9. Combination of variations in inflammation- and endoplasmic reticulum-associated genes as putative biomarker for bevacizumab response in KRAS wild-type colorectal cancer. [Journal Article] Barat A, Smeets D, Moran B, Zhang W, Cao S, Das S, Klinger R, Betge J, Murphy V, Bacon O, Kay E, Van Grieken NCT, Verheul HMW, Gaiser T, Schulte N, Ebert MP, Fender B, Hennessy B, McNamara D, O'Connor D, Gallagher WM, Cremolini C, Loupakis F, Parikh A, Mancao C, Ylstra B, Lambrechts D, Lenz H-J, Byrne A, Prehn J Published 17 Jun 2020
10. BET Inhibition as a Rational Therapeutic Strategy for Invasive Lobular Breast Cancer. [Journal Article] Walsh L, Haley KE, Moran B, Mooney B, Tarrant F, Madden SF, Grande AD, Fan Y, Das S, Rueda OM, Dowling CM, Varešlija D, Chin SF, Linn S, Young LS, Jirström K, Crown JP, Bernards R, Caldas C, Gallagher WM, O'Connor DP, Chonghaile TN Published 1 Dec 2019
11. FKBPL-based peptide, ALM201, targets angiogenesis and cancer stem cells in ovarian cancer. [Journal Article] Annett S, Moore G, Short A, Marshall A, McCrudden C, Yakkundi A, Das S, McCluggage WG, Nelson L, Harley I, Moustafa N, Kennedy CJ, deFazio A, Brand A, Sharma R, Brennan D, O’Toole S, O’Leary J, Bates M, O’Riain C, O'Connor D, Furlong F, McCarthy H, Kissenpfennig A, McClements L, Robson T Published 27 Nov 2019
12. Correction: BAG3 promotes tumour cell proliferation by regulating EGFR signal transduction pathways in triple negative breast cancer (Oncotarget (2018) 9 (15673-15690) DOI: 10.18632/oncotarget.24590). [Journal Article] Shields S, Conroy E, O'Grady A, McGoldrick A, Connor K, Ward MP, Useckaite Z, Dempsey E, Reilly R, Fan Y, Chubb A, Matallanas DG, Kay E, O'Connor D, McCann A, Gallagher WM, Coppinger J Published 3 May 2019
13. Targeted DNA Methylation Profiling of Human Cardiac Tissue Reveals Novel Epigenetic Traits and Gene Deregulation Across Different Heart Failure Patient Subtypes. [Journal Article] Glezeva N, Moran B, Collier P, Moravec CS, Phelan D, Donnellan E, Russell-Hallinan A, O'Connor D, Gallagher WM, Gallagher J, Mcdonald K, Ledwidge M, Baugh J, Das S, Watson CJ Published 1 Mar 2019
