About the PI

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Dr. Nagarajan is a breast cancer research scientist investigating the transcriptional regulation of disease progression in breast cancers. She completed her Integrated M.Sc. in Bio-Medical Science at Bharathidasan University, Trichy, India. After obtaining a prestigious and competitive PhD scholarship from German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), she moved to the University of Goettingen, Germany, to work with Prof. Dr. Steven A Johnsen, for her PhD. Her successful PhD research on an epigenetic reader protein BRD4 in ER+ breast cancers introduced the possibility of using Bromodomain and Extraterminal domain-containing protein (BET) inhibitors as a therapeutic strategy against breast cancers. This body of work resulted in being awarded best PhD from her graduate program, Göttingen Graduate Center for Neurosciences, Biophysics, and Molecular Biosciences.

As a Research associate, she worked with Prof. Jason Carroll, CRUK Cambridge Instiutute. Using genome-wide CRISPR-based drug resistance screens and functional genomic approaches (ChIP-seq, ATAC-seq, RNA-seq), she investigated a novel role for the SWI/SNF chromatin remodelling complex, and its subunit ARID1A in controlling endocrine treatment response. As a result of her achievements, she got promoted as a Senior Research Associate at CRUK Cambridge Institute. Then, she moved to Manchester to start her first PI position in the Division of Molecular and Cellular Function. Based on her research findings from CRISPR screening, she developed an independent grant proposal as a PI on chromatin architecture proteins in ER+  breast cancers and this was recently awarded a Career Establishment award by the charity Cancer Research UK.