Bradley Cairns

Bradley Cairns characterized how SWI/SNF (BAF) chromatin remodeling complexes maintain epigenetic memory through nucleosome positioning at regulatory elements, and demonstrated that BAF complex mutations found in over 20 percent of human cancers disrupt normal epigenetic memory leading to aberrant gene activation and silencing patterns that drive tumorigenesis. His work on nucleosome positioning inheritance during DNA replication revealed that chromatin remodelers re-establish nucleosome architecture as a form of epigenetic memory independent of DNA and histone modifications. He develops therapeutic strategies targeting BAF-dependent epigenetic memory to restore normal gene expression in BAF-mutant cancers.