Understanding Human Diseases

Metabolism of healthy and diseased cells

Our ability to solve the challenges in improving human health relies upon our understanding of underlying biochemical processes. For example, the efficacy of cancer therapies in patients can be enhanced by better understanding in vivo physiology and improving specificity. One of my research goals is to identify control knobs for tuning metabolic pathways to selectively target cancer metabolism. Integrative approaches for ΔG measurement, assessment of enzyme efficiency, and identification of metabolic control sites is a promising step towards curing cancer because it points to where, when, and how to intervene in complex biochemical networks. I would also like to explore diverse opportunities in improving human health (e.g., understanding metabolism of immune cells, diabetes, stem cells, and development as well as developing new antibiotics).

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References

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Miller, R. A., Shi, Y., Lu, W., Pirman, D. A., Jatkar, A., Blatnik, M., Wu, H., Cardenas, C., Wan, M., Foskett, J. K., Park, J. O., Zhang, Y., Holland, W. L., Rabinowitz, J. D., Birnbaum, M. J. Targeting hepatic glutaminase activity to ameliorate hyperglycemia. Nature Medicine (2018) doi:10.1038/nm.4514
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