Research

Mass spectrometry (MS)-based proteomics is a uniquely powerful and versatile tool in biology as it allows unbiased, comprehensive and sensitive detection of proteins in complex mixtures. With the ability to identify thousands of proteins in a single experiment, MS-based proteomics makes it easy to generate lengthy protein catalogs, but qualitative comparisons of lists of proteins is less informative. Instead, the ability to measure abundances of specific proteins and observe these changing over time in response to a defined perturbation is extremely powerful. Such information can be obtained with quantitative proteomics, which greatly enhances the power and utility of MS-based methods.

We use proteomics approaches to study cellular signaling processes and drug response. These include the use of chemoproteomics tools like kinobeads to enrich kinases and their interacting partners in cell or tissue lysates. We use these enriched kinomes to measure the activity of signaling pathways to study the response of these cells and tissues to specific drugs. Our laboratory focuses on developing and applying novel proteomics approaches to measure proteome-wide changes in post-translational modifications and protein abundances whilst studying protein-protein interactions that dynamically regulate cellular processes like growth and proliferation.