Welcome to the Gilkes Lab
Breast & Gynecologic Malignancies Group   Johns Hopkins School of Medicine
Our lab is part of the Breast & Gynecologic Malignancies Group at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.
Our work is focused on the role of hypoxia in breast cancer metastasis. One of our main interests are the gene expression changes that happen under hypoxia and how they can both contribute to tumor progression. We are a dynamic and creative lab that always likes a good challenge. We address our questions through 2D and 3D
Using RNA sequencing of over 30 breast cancer cell lines, we developed a prognostic hypoxia gene signature that includes novel hypoxia-induced genes. We want to know these novel genes function in breast cancer?
Using imaging techniques like Light Sheet Microscopy we study brain metastasis. This is an image of an entire mouse brain (blue) with a growing metastatic lesion (green).
We've developed a hypoxia color changing system to help us determine hypoxia's role in metastasis in vivo. Above are organoids and spheroids that were developed from this model.