McGill Department of Physiology • Faculty & Staff Directory

My laboratory is interested in studying the molecular mechanisms underlying cellular growth and proliferation, and how these processes are normally regulated in the immune system or deregulated during tumourigenesis. My research centers on understanding how biological systems coordinate their metabolic activities to meet the bioenergetic challenges of proliferation. During proliferation a mother cell must increase its biomass and replicate its genome prior to dividing to create two daughter cells. Thus, the decision to proliferate presents a significant bioenergetic challenge – the cell must generate enough energy and acquire or synthesize biomolecules at a sufficient rate to meet the demands of proliferation. One of the intriguing problems in biology is understanding the mechanisms by which cells adapt to survive periods of metabolic stress and maintain cell growth and proliferation. Tumour cells often display fundamental changes in energy metabolism and increase their uptake of nutrients such as glucose to meet the increased bioenergetic demands of proliferation.

Future studies in my lab will focus on elucidating the critical interactions between signal transduction pathways and cellular metabolism. Of particular interest is the function of the AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK), a critical regulator of cellular metabolism, and the tumour suppressor p53 in the cellular adaptation to metabolic stress. We will employ a variety of tools including biochemistry, metabolic analysis, cell biology, bioinformatics, and mouse models to address our biological questions. My hope is that by understanding the metabolic networks at play in both normal and pathological settings (i.e. cancer) we may gain insight that will lead to novel therapeutics for the treatment of cancer.