Cancer, inflammation and infectious disease pharmacology

Investigators from the department are working on the fundamental aspects of how cancer cells proliferate and metastasize, how inflammatory and immunological responses are modulated during infection and what are the structural basis of virus host cell interaction. Areas of focus are to understand how steroids and insulin-like growth factor (IGF-1) mediated signaling stimulates cancer cells to proliferate, migrate and metastasize. How cancer cells meet their metabolic demands by regulating cap-dependent translational initiation, DNA repair and replication. Another area of focus is to understand how cancer cells acquired blood supply angiogenesis, a fundamental step in the growth and metastasis of cancer. Learning from these studies, investigators are developing novel, targeted therapies to treat cancer. While cancer is considered as a wound that never heals, inflammatory responses during normal wound healing process are studied at the molecular, cellular and organismal level. Investigations are carried out on the structural basis of virus binding to cellular receptors and how it modulates infectivity.

List of Faculty

Peter Bitterman            Frank Burton                 Colin Campbell

Greg Connell                 Stephen Hecht               Hiroshi Hiasa      

Carol Lange                   Fang Li                           Louis Mansky    

Steve Patterson       Sundaram Ramakrishnan     Sabita Roy;

Deepali Sachdev           Ashok Saluja                     Subbaya Subramanian      

Daniel Vallera                 Elizabeth Wattenberg       Douglas Yee