Simon Cook - Head of Laboratory
MAP kinase signalling pathways and life or death decisions
During development cells are faced with a variety of important ‘decisions’ such as whether to progress through the cell cycle and divide or to arrest and differentiate. Even the decision to survive or to die by apoptosis is of fundamental importance to normal development. These decisions are dictated by developmental cues such as growth factors that exert their effects within the cell by activating a variety of signal transduction pathways.
Amongst these signalling pathways the mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) superfamily of protein kinases play central roles in coordinating cell division and death. Their functions and regulation are substantially conserved in yeast, worms, flies and man.
These signalling pathways are of inherent biological interest if we are to understand normal cellular and organismal homeostasis. In addition, they are also important because they are frequently de-regulated in a variety of diseases including cancer, autoimmunity and neurodegeneration so they represent potential new drug targets.
We are seeking to understand the role of different MAPK pathways in cell cycle control and cell survival/apoptosis and their regulation and de-regulation in human tumour cells. We employ a variety of strategies including: use of conditional protein kinases to rapidly activate defined MAPK pathways; selective inhibitors of these pathways, some of which are novel proprietary drugs in clinical trials; proteomics, to identify new MAPK/SAPK substrates and genomics to identify new MAPK/SAPK gene targets.
For more information about our research and who we are see the Cook Group Homepages
