Henry Wood

I work to coordinate wet lab and bioinformatics analysis to provide clinically relevant interpretation of large-scale datasets. I mainly work with genomic and microbiome data for various cancer types, particularly colorectal cancer.

My PhD and early career were spent studying evolutionary processes in non-model organisms using genetic fingerprinting techniques, followed by molecular cloning and sequencing. Specifically, I studied the evolution of drug resistance in commercially important crop diseases and speciation in marine molluscs. I moved into cancer research in 2009, where my experience working with non-optimal environmental samples allowed me to develop novel laboratory techniques to study genomic changes and viral infections in archival tumour samples using the newly emerging next-generation sequencing platforms. Working initially on lung and oral cancer, my work became progressively more computational, to process the ever-increasing amounts of data produced by the rapidly improving technology.

Collaborating with statisticians, I have developed multiple computer packages which process sequence data to study genomic copy number changes, viral infection, cancer subtype stratification, and survival. We used these approaches to study the genomic changes and sub-clonal makeup of early lesions, and their subsequent development into tumours and metastases.

In 2013, I joined the Colorectal Cancer Research Group in Leeds, where as well as my own research, my duties involved the management and development of genomic research in the group, with particular responsibility for bridging the gap between wet lab scientists and bioinformatic analysis.

In 2023, I was made a lecturer. As such, my role continued but was expanded to include the exploration of novel areas of research and making bioinformatic analyses accessible to researchers from a broad range of backgrounds.