Dr. Ralph Scully

Biography

Ralph Scully is a Professor at Harvard University, specializing in the study of the relationships between mammalian double strand break repair and genomic instability in cancer. With a focus on the major pathways contributing to double strand break repair such as homologous recombination and non-homologous end joining, his research highlights the role these mechanisms play in suppressing cancer and aging in mammals. Scully's significant contributions to the field began over two decades ago with the proposal that BRCA1 and BRCA2 function as tumor suppressors by controlling sister chromatid recombination, a critical process for maintaining genomic integrity. His innovative work includes developing a method to utilize Escherichia coli replication fork barriers in mammalian cells to study stalled replisome responses, revealing important insights into the unique rules governing repair mechanisms for stalled forks as opposed to traditional double strand breaks. Scully's recent research has focused on the tandem duplicator phenotype seen in BRCA1 mutant cancers and the complex chromosomal rearrangements that arise from defective stalled fork processing. He is dedicated to improving the understanding of BRCA1 variants of uncertain significance and their associated cancer risks in human populations.

Research Interests