Welcome to the Center Of Cross-Organ Vascular Pathology

Understanding the pathogenesis of a disease process is challenging due to the complex interactions of several components starting from the atomic level to genomic and proteomic alterations to environmental influence. While there are several tools to probe the mechanism of a disease, standard approaches to considering disease-specific and patient-specific effects are poorly predictive. Even with the explosion of techniques assessing the evolution of the disease from a normal milieu to a disease milieu, making the jump from cells, animal models, and humans has been difficult, let alone assessing the individual variations in a population. Our laboratory harnesses the power of research tools spanning from various cellular and molecular biological models, relevant animal models (zebrafish and mice), mass spectrometry, and genomic analysis, to computational methods to develop a highly integrative platform to understand the molecular mechanisms that drive disease pathogenesis. We strive to validate our hypotheses in humanized models or human samples to develop a translational bridge. We particularly examine the role of post-translational modifications of proteins such as polyubiquitination of the key mediators of vascular pathologies in cancer and kidney diseases with an intention to gain a deeper understanding of those disease processes that can help develop a theranostic platform in the future.