[5][6] Owen was a postdoctoral fellow at Cardiff University investigating the role of the APC gene in Wnt signalling and cancer.
[7][9] He also leads the CRUK Glasgow Centre,[10] which aims to bring together scientists and clinicians to work together on cancer research, drug discovery and patient care.
[3] Using this model system, Owen's group identified critical functional roles for genes such as MYC, RAC and MTOR.
[16] Owen's group continued these studies into the pancreas to show that inhibition of CXCR2 suppresses metastasis in pancreatic cancer.
Following on from these studies, the group worked with Florian Greten's laboratory to show that additional mutations can cause an expansion in the cell of origin.