Jerry Chipuk
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, NY·Biology
Mitochondria, the cell's power plants, also control metabolism and decide when a cell dies. Cancer-driving mutations reshape them.
- Fields
Biology
Biochemistry
Medicine & Clinical Research
- Topics
mitochondria
mtUPR
oncogene-induced senescence
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Mar 2028
What they work on
- Determine how cancer-gene signaling from BRAF V600E or mutant NRAS switches on the ATF5-dependent mitochondrial unfolded protein response, a mitochondrial stress alarm, during senescence in primary human melanocytes.
- Identify the gene expression programs that the mitochondrial unfolded protein response sets up and maintains during oncogene-induced senescence and early primary melanoma, using cell models and patient RNA-seq data.
- Define how mitochondrial unfolded protein response activation affects disease in models of nevi (moles) and primary melanoma, and how cells escape senescence.
- Test whether chronic mitochondrial division, driven by MAPK-pathway cancer genes, promotes mitochondrial DNA mutations and organelle heterogeneity that trigger melanocyte transformation.
- Develop tools to detect and inhibit chronic mitochondrial division as prognostic markers and treatment strategies for melanoma.
More about the research
Both projects study how the cancer genes BRAF and NRAS, mutated in melanoma, change mitochondria in pigment-producing skin cells called melanocytes. One looks at the earliest stage, before cancer forms, when these genes trigger senescence, a protective permanent growth arrest. The other looks at how constant splitting of mitochondria drives cells toward cancer.
Why it matters
Understanding how mitochondria help melanocytes resist or slide into melanoma could improve prevention, diagnosis and treatment of melanoma. Chronic mitochondrial division appears early in melanoma and may offer prognostic markers and drug targets. The senescence work may reveal how pre-malignant skin lesions are held in check and how they escape.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Jonathan Friedman
University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, TX·Biology
Determine how structural changes are coordinated across the two mitochondrial membranes during mitochondrial fission, the process by which these organelles divide.
Erin Peckham-Gregory
Baylor College of Medicine, TX·Genetics
Analyze germline whole-genome sequencing data from 191 LCH case-parent trios in the Gabriella Miller Kids First program to define inheritance patterns and the role of de novo mutations in LCH risk.
Sunday Akintoye
University of Pennsylvania, PA·Medicine & Clinical Research
Determine whether autophagy proteins such as LC3, p62, and BECLIN1 act as cancer-promoting factors linked to racial disparity, aggressive behavior, and recurrence in ameloblastoma tissues from Black and White patients.
The school
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai: 45 labs on PI Pages, $1.0B a year on research, 62 research doctorates a year.
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