Grant: Project Grant

Our team will be working to develop a novel strategy for killing brain cancer cells. Brain cancers frequently become drug resistance emphasizing the need for new treatments. Autophagy is a "self-digestion" process that degrades internal materials to generate building blocks and energy for keeping cells alive. When over activated, this process could also kill cells through destroying the internal structures of cells. Autophagy can be classified into two subtypes: macroautophagy (mAutophagy), and chaperone-mediated autophagy (CMA). We will investigate the roles of these subtypes, mAutophagy and CMA, in regulating cell survival and death in brain cancers both in cells and animal models which could lead to developing a novel strategy for killing drug-resistant brain cancer cells.