My laboratory aspires to understand the mechanisms underlying human cancer susceptibility, in order to find innovative ways to intercept cancer early in its evolution. Genome instability, a hallmark and driver of cancer evolution, arises early in carcinogenesis, through the failure of mechanisms that normally safeguard genome integrity. We study these mechanisms to understand how their malfunction leads to cancer, and have devised powerful new technologies to translate this knowledge to clinical application for early cancer detection and treatment. One major interest is in the ‘breast cancer gene’ BRCA2, whose vital role as a genome guardian we were amongst the first to discover.