Research Overview

A major interest in our lab is to determine how tyrosine phosphorylation regulates epigenetic processes that affects cellular homeostasis and cancer cell survival. We employ multiple tyrosine kinases to investigate these processes. The examples are:

Ack1 (TNK2): Its role in oncogenic addiction in breast, prostate, lung and pancreatic cancers

WEE1: Its role in Gliobalstoma tumorigenesis and radioresistance

Some of major findings of our lab include:

• WEE1's role in Glioblastoma progression and radioresistance was identified
• Ack1 was identified as a major integrater of signaling from multiple receptor tyrosine kinases. We synthesized a small molecule inhibitor, AIM-100, which inhibits Ack1 signaling and suppresses cancer cell growth.
• Ack1 phosphorylated Androgen receptor (AR) at Tyr267 which in turn directly modulated ATM expression regulating radioresistance in prostate cancers.
• We identified a novel phosphorylation site, Tyr176, in AKT. Significantly, AKT Tyr 176 phosphorylation correlated with breast cancer progression and inversely correlated with patient survival

 



Mahajan K et al. J. Cell. Physiol. 224: 327-333, 2010.

Current Projects
• Ack1 kinase as an epigenetic modulator
• Ack1 knockout and transgenic mice models to study Ack1/AKT signaling
• Ack1/pAR/ATM signaling in radioresistance of prostate cancer

Postdoctoral Opportunities


We are currently interested in hiring two postdoctoral fellows and research associates in our lab, If interested, please send your CV and names of three references at


Nupam.mahajan@moffitt.org

 

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