Description:

The Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Genetics presents:

Rushika M Perera, PhD
Associate Professor
Department of Anatomy and Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center
University of California San Francisco  

Presentation:

"Identifying and disabling the metabolic engines that fuel pancreatic cancer"

Abstract:

My laboratory is interested in studying how trafficking pathways such as autophagy co-operate with the lysosome - a degradative organelle – to enable metabolic and cellular adaptation to stress in health and disease, in particular, the most common cancer of the pancreas, pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC). Studies from my lab haveidentified novel mechanisms mediating lysosome biogenesis and function in PDAC, including how autophagy and the lysosome cooperate to facilitate immune evasion and therapy resistance. Ongoing studies have identified new mechanisms of lysosome dependent nutrient processing and recycling in mediating metastasis to specific secondary organ sites.  We have also developed methodologies that enable isolation of intact lysosomes from cells and tissues that are amenable to mass-spectrometry based proteomics and metabolomics. These approaches have allowed us to achieve an unprecedented snapshot of lysosome composition at different stages of disease progression.

Hosts: Dr. Issam Ben-Sahra, Associate Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics and Dr. Navdeep S. Chandel, Professor of Medicine (Pulmonary and Critical Care) and Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics