My laboratory is investigating how cells die via a process called apoptosis.
Apoptotic cell death is a normal process that helps remove excess or damaged cells. When apoptotic cell death goes wrong, the results are often cancer or autoimmune diseases.
My laboratory is interested in the proteins inside cells that orchestrate apoptosis. We are focusing on how the killer proteins, BAX and BAK, cause organelles called mitochondria to be leaky and kill the cell. Understanding this process is critical to developing new treatments that either enhance or block apoptosis in cancer and autoimmune disease.
