Associate Professor Greg Hannigan

Senior Scientist & Research Fellow

Centre for Cancer Research

Associate Professor Hannigan received his PhD in Medical and Molecular Genetics from the University of Toronto, under the supervision of Professor Bryan Williams.

In 1991 he moved to Boston for postdoctoral studies at Massachussetts General Hospital with Dr James Gusella, before returning to University of Toronto for a second postdoctoral fellowship with Dr Shoukat Dedhar. He was then recruited to the Toronto Hospital for Sick Children in 1997, where he set up his own research program studying cell adhesion signaling.

Assoc Prof Hannigan's research focuses on a pathway regulated by the integrin linked kinase, which he discovered during his postdoctoral studies in the Dedhar lab. ILK is frequently activated in, and contributes to, the progression of cancers such as breast, prostate, lung and gastric carcinomas. Assoc Prof Hannigan’s lab has identified ILK-associated proteins, b-parvin and ILKAP, which interact with ILK to inhibit its activity. These proteins are also downregulated in some human cancers, suggesting potential tumor suppressor roles.    

He was awarded a Canadian Institutes of Health Research Scholarship, and the Premier’s Research Excellence Award.  In 2001 he was promoted to the level of Associate Professor at the University of Toronto. He moved to Australia and joined MIMR in 2008, to continue his research in cell signaling and cancer.