Alakananda Basu, PhD

The primary focus of my research is in signal transduction, especially in the context of cancer chemotherapy. One of the major research efforts is to investigate how signal transduction pathways regulate cell survival and cell death. We have been studying how various signaling pathways, such as protein kinase C, Akt, and mechanistic target of rapamycin (mTOR)/S6 kinase (S6K), regulate apoptosis (a genetically programmed cell death), autophagy (a process by which a cell recycles its own components to survive under stressful or nutrient-derived conditions), and senescence (loss of proliferative capacity of cells).
We are using cellular, molecular, and biochemical approaches as well as state-of-the-art technologies, such as proteomics and genomics to determine how an intervention with a signaling pathway can be exploited for cancer therapy.
Another area of research is to investigate the molecular mechanism(s) of drug resistance. The ultimate goal of our research is to identify novel targets for cancer therapy, to exploit intracellular signaling systems to develop innovative strategies to treat cancer, and to identify potential biomarkers to predict patient response to cancer therapy.