Ran Kafri

Assistant Professor

Dr. Kafri’s research program lies at the interface of cellular metabolism, organismal longevity, and the prevention of age-dependent disease. Past studies have long recognized the mTORC1/Insulin as the central regulator of both cell size and mammalian longevity: conditions that down-regulate mTORC1 result in animals with smaller cells and longer lifespans. While past studies showed that mTORC1 promotes growth in cell size, these studies did not reveal how mTORC1 is regulated to reproducibly specify a different and specific characteristic cell size for each of the different human cell types. Similarly, how is mTORC1 regulated to specify a different and specific lifespan for different mammals? Over the past years, Dr. Kafri’s lab has revealed that – just as a thermostat maintains fixed room temperature – the metabolic rate of animal cells is maintained by a molecular circuitry whereby: the p38MAPK selectively activates mTORC1 in cells that grow slower than a critical minima; while p53 inhibits mTORC1 in cells that grow too fast. More recently, the Kafri lab has shown that these mechanisms of mTORC1 regulation are responsible for the differences in cancer onset age when comparing individuals in both mouse and human Li Fraumeni patient cohorts. Building on these findings, the Kafri lab is now exploring the possibility that pharmacological manipulation of mTORC1 regulators could be exploited for the pharmacological preventions of cancers in Li Fraumeni patients.

Talks About
#biology #analysis

Preferred Locations
#Northamerica