DNA replikatsioon on vähiteraapiate üks peamisi sihtmärke, kuna vähirakud paljunevad tavarakkudest kiiremini ja on üldiselt altimad replikatsioonilisele stressile. Suurem osa praegustest teadmistest DNA replikatsiooni initsiatsiooni kohta pärineb mudelorganismidest, näiteks pärmist, kuid nende teadmiste kohaldatavus inimsüsteemile on piiratud. Selleks, et kasutada eksperimentaalseid leide vähiteraapias, on oluline uurida replikatsiooni initsiatsiooni inimrakkudes. Uurimisrühma olulisteks eesmärkideks on tuvastada uued tegurid inimese replikatsiooni initsiatsiooni erinevates etappides ning iseloomustada DNA polümeraas epsiloni mittekatalüütilist rolli ja Timeless valgu olulisust replisoomi assambleerumisel.
DNA replication is an essential process of genome duplication that has to be tightly regulated to ensure that each part of the genome isduplicated once and only once per cell cycle. DNAreplication remains one of the main targets ofcancer therapies as cancer cells tend to proliferate faster and are generally prone to replicationstress. One way to make replication targetingdrugs more efficient is to increase the number ofreplication forks in cancer cells. However, mostof the replication initiation research to date hasbeen done using model organisms such as yeastSaccharomyces cerevisiae and Saccharomycespombe, or Xenopus laevis egg extracts. The human DNA replication system is, as expected,much more complex, and identifying humanhomologs using data from model systems hasproven difficult, resulting in the need to reevaluate every finding from a model system ona case-by-case basis.Currently the research is focused on the following topics: (1) the role of DNA polymerase epsilonin replication initiation in human cells; (2) developing a novel system to study DNA replicationinitiation in human cells based on proximitylabelling; (3) the role and order of kinase activities in replication initiation.