Research Overview

Our lab is interested in the basic mechanisms that regulate growth, the process whereby cells accumulate mass and increase in size. Growth is a critical determinant of the sizes of cells, organs and organisms and is often deranged in human diseases, such as diabetes and cancer. In contrast to cell cycle progression, the mechanisms that control growth are relatively poorly understood. Our long-term goals are to identify and characterize these mechanisms and to understand their roles in the normal and diseased physiology of mammals. Our current focus is on a cellular system called the Target of Rapamycin (TOR) pathway, a major regulator of growth in many eukaryotic species. In mammals, the central component of the pathway is a large protein kinase called mTOR that is the target of rapamycin, an FDA-approved immunosuppressive drug that is also in clinical trials as an anti-cancer agent and as a blocker of restenosis after balloon angioplasty.

In addition to our work on growth control, we are developing and applying new technologies that facilitate the analysis of gene function in mammalian cells. We have developed ‘cell-based microarrays’ that allow us to look at the cellular effects of perturbing the activity of thousands of genes in parallel. On a standard microscope slide, we create microarrays consisting of 4,000-10,000 spots. Each spot is composed of a cluster of live mammalian cells over- or under-expressing a specific gene. The microarrays can be used to rapidly identify genes that underlie cellular phenomena of interest.