Research interest

We study the regulation of cytoskeletal force production during processes such as cell migration and 3D tissue invasion. Cell migration towards factors such as growth hormones (chemotaxis) plays a central role in a wide variety of processes, ranging from metastatic behavior of cancer cells, to neutrophil homing during infections, to keratinocyte migration during skin wound healing.

We focus on “myosin II” a cytoskeletal force-producing enzyme that has critical roles in both cell migration and cell division. Our long-term goals are to identify the regulatory mechanisms that control this enzyme, and to learn ways to manipulate this machinery in live cells and tissues with the goal of better clinical control of cancer progression and skin wound healing. For these projects we work with human breast cancer cell lines, and in our skin wound healing studies we work with primary human keratinocytes and mouse skin models. We use cell imaging, biochemistry, protein structure function approaches, and siRNA methods for these studies.