Our Research

Cell cycle phase-specific control of cellular metabolism

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 key aspects of proliferative metabolism remain to be discovered. We are providing critical new understanding of how the cell cycle controls cellular metabolism by studying metabolic regulation in individual cell cycle phases.

Identifying and exploiting metabolic vulnerabilities in tumors

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. A major focus of the Valvezan Lab is in exploiting such metabolic vulnerabilities.