Andrew Stephen Mason BSc(Hons) PhD AFHEA
York Against Cancer 30th Anniversary Research Fellow and Proleptic Lecturer in Cancer Informatics
Andrew achieved a 1st class BSc Biological Sciences (Hons. Evolutionary Biology) degree from The University of Edinburgh in 2013. He gained his PhD from The Roslin Institute in 2017, supervised by Professor David Burt and Dr Paul Hocking in a BBSRC CaSE studentship supported by Hy-Line International. Andrew's PhD project involved the identification and characterisation of endogenous retroviruses in avian genomes, focusing on endogenous Avian Leukosis Virus (ALVE) integrations in chicken and their ongoing commercial and evolutionary relevance. Andrew continued his interest in ALVEs through a 5-month Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and BBSRC-funded postdoctoral position based at The Roslin Institute, but working remotely as he made the move to the University of York.
In York Andrew began a 2-year postdoctoral position in Professor Jenny Southgate's lab in the Jack Birch Unit for Molecular Carcinogenesis, utilising transcriptomic analyses, so successfully used to subtype cancers, to interogate benign bladder uropathies, in work funded by Ono Pharmaceuticals Ltd and supported by York Against Cancer. Andrew began working on diverse projects including a broad characterisation of the differences between bladder and ureteric urothelium (highly convergent tissues lining the urinary tract, yet derived from different embryological germ layers) generating bulk tissue short-read (Illumina) and long-read (ONT) RNA sequencing, and, more recently, single-cell RNA sequencing data from the 10x Genomics platform.
Andrew started the Mason Lab (within the Jack Birch Unit) in November 2019 following competitive interview for the York Against Cancer 30th Anniversary Lectureship in Cancer Informatics. Developing his interests in urothelial cancer, Andrew works with large cohort studies such as The Cancer Genome Atlas, and is one of the bladder cancer bioinformatic leads in the Genomics England 100,000 genomes project. Current work utilises transcriptomic (bulk and single-cell), genomic and lipidomic approaches. In addition, Andrew continues to develop his interests in retroviral-induced cancers in chicken, particularly given their utility as a model of human retroviral-induced blood cancers.
In September 2021 Andrew successfully gained an Elixir-UK FAIR Data Stewardship Training Fellowship to improve research data acumen within the Department of Biology and YBRI.
Beyond research, Andrew has a fantastic wife and two children with limited sleep requirements, plays violin and sings tenor, loves all things outdoors (maps, walking, Munro bagging, cycling, growing veg), and can't resist a single malt round the fire.