Dr. Juliet Daniel is a Professor and Cancer Biologist in the Department of Biology at McMaster University. Dr. Daniel received her B.Sc. from Queen’s University and her Ph.D. from the University of British Columbia. She spent six years as a Postdoctoral Fellow at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital – Memphis & Vanderbilt University–Nashville before joining McMaster in 1999 to establish her own research laboratory.

Dr. Daniel’s research expertise is cell adhesion and signaling through transcription factors. Her research team seeks to elucidate how malfunction of adhesion-related signaling pathways and transcription factors contribute to cancer. Dr. Daniel’s research led to her discovery of a new protein “Kaiso”, named after the popular Caribbean music “calypso”. Kaiso is a transcription factor that regulates the expression of many genes, including those that control cell proliferation and adhesion. Consequently, when Kaiso malfunctions, cells proliferate uncontrollably and become more motile, which contribute to tumor progression and spread in various human tumors.

Dr. Daniel’s research is currently focused on the aggressive and difficult to treat triple negative breast cancers (TNBC). This breast cancer subtype is most prevalent in young women of African ancestry and Hispanic women despite the fact that these women have a lower incidence and lifetime risk of breast cancer than other ethnic groups.