Postdoctoral Fellow – Cell cycle control of cellular metabolism Full-time NEW

Defining cell cycle phase-specific control of cellular metabolism to identify new metabolic vulnerabilities in cancer.

Each phase of the cell cycle has specific biosynthetic requirements that are necessary for successful progression, indicating that phase-specific control of cellular metabolism is essential. However, our current knowledge of cell growth and proliferation lacks sufficient understanding of how cellular metabolism is differentially regulated throughout the cell cycle. This is fundamental to unraveling the basic biology of cell growth and proliferation, and has clear implications for pathological conditions involving dysregulation of the cell cycle and metabolism. Metabolic changes that only occur in specific phases would be difficult to detect in traditional studies on asynchronously growing cell populations, thus many key aspects of proliferative metabolism remain to be discovered. The Valvezan lab is providing critical new understanding of how the cell cycle controls cellular metabolism by studying metabolic regulation in individual cell cycle phases.

Metabolic reprogramming is a ubiquitous hallmark of cancer cells, induced by mutations that uncouple growth-promoting signaling and metabolic outputs from their normal regulatory inputs. Although this provides a growth advantage, locking pathways in the “on” state can come at the cost of reduced plasticity and increased dependence on specific nutrients, enzymes, or pathways for sustained growth and viability. Thus, the uniquely reprogrammed metabolic networks in cancer cells offer opportunities to identify and target metabolic processes that are uniquely essential in those cells.

We seek a postdoctoral fellow to study how metabolism is differentially regulated throughout the cell cycle, with the ultimate goal of identifying cell cycle phase-specific metabolic vulnerabilities that can be exploited in cancer.

The postdoctoral fellow will work at the interface of basic and translational science, combining cell and molecular biology, biochemistry, genetic, and pharmacological approaches with the latest metabolomics, metabolic flux analysis, and expression profiling techniques in cultured cells and mouse models to gain a comprehensive understanding of how the cell cycle remodels cellular metabolism and how to leverage these new insights for therapeutic benefit.

To apply please email your CV/resume and a Cover Letter containing a brief description of your background, research interests, and career goals to Dr. Alexander Valvezan.

Tagged as: Life Sciences