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Research Interests of Participating Faculty
Jason Bush, Biology.
The long range scientific goals of this laboratory are to
identify and understand novel cell biology during cancer progression. As a model system,
the focus is on cultured epithelial cancers that cause high rates of mortality and yet
receive far less research attention such as pancreatic, esophageal, and gastric cancers.
As a cornerstone of the lab, comparative/quantitative proteomics (the large-scale study
of protein mixtures) and mass spectrometry are important first-order tools for analyses.
We can direct our questions towards particular aspects of biology with respect to cancer
cells using a combination of techniques such as cutting-edge labeling strategies and
sub-cellular extraction procedures. Following this, we use traditional molecular biology
to gain mechanistic insight about protein interactions. Several ongoing themes in the
lab include, 1) deciphering the relationship between cell adhesion and degradation of the
extracellular environment as a mode of metastasis, 2) defining changes in the
membrane-cytoskeletal proteome between normal and cancer cells at different stages, and
3) developing alternative model systems for cancer-related biology. The methodologies
involved in proteomics are a burgeoning field of biological research and learning such
techniques would be valuable experience for those interested in continuing research careers.
Students will be vigorously involved in all aspects of research and will be assigned
independent research projects overseen by senior lab personnel. The opportunities to
write scholarly proposals offer further training for career-oriented scientists. We have
collaborations with Dr. Jeffrey Smith (Burnham Institute, La Jolla, CA) and several other
laboratories around the U.S.
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