Research Interests
Research in the Laboratory of Cell Structure and Signal Integration at Van Andel Institute is devoted to understanding how defects in cellular organization trigger and/or support disease progression. The goal of the lab is to identify defective components in the machinery responsible for cytoskeleton assembly, for example, in the Rho-regulated formin family of proteins. The ultimate goal of our research is to exploit what we learn to improve diagnosis and to devise innovative molecular tools to repair the defective components.
By its dynamic nature, the cytoskeleton spatially and temporally organizes intracellular signaling networks in order to effectively interpret extracellular cues and to generate appropriate responses to them. Our specific disease focus is on the mechanisms that control the growth, differentiation, and migration of normal bone marrow stem cells and to understand how breakdowns lead to myelodysplasia and cancers of the blood.
Emerging topics in the lab include the dissection of mechanisms that govern “Go or Grow” decisions made by solid tumor cells and the how cell structure influences the functional integrity of neurons in both the central and peripheral nervous systems.
