Dr Diana Blaydon's first research job was in a genetics lab - she has studied rare, inherited conditions for many years. Knowing that the work she does can make a real difference to people's lives is very motivating to her, and she says "there's no better feeling than the answer to a question being revealed through your own experiments".

Outside of the lab, Dr Blaydon loves to travel and try new foods, both whilst travelling and through cooking at home - Korean rice bowls are currently a favourite, though she hasn't managed to visit Korea yet!

TOC is a rare disease caused by specific mutations to a gene called RHBDF2. A patient with TOC has a much higher chance of developing OSCC – by the age of 70, there is a 90% chance they will develop the disease. Some cancers caused by inherited genetic changes tend to happen earlier in life than if they had happened by chance in a patient without the mutation, however that is not the case for TOC – most patients who develop OSCC do so around the same age as other patients. This suggests it could be a good model for studying the earliest stages of OSCC.

Dr Blaydon, Professor Kelsell, and their team are using TOC to study the early stages of OSCC in two ways. First, they will use biopsies from patients with TOC to study how OSCC first appears in human tissue. They will look for biomarkers that might be important for the earliest stages of OSCC. Second, they will use mice with TOC and study how cancer first appears in this case, including any early-stage markers they can find that could then be used as new ways to detect or diagnose OSCC.