Thomas M Tomasiak

Our group focuses on the regulation of nutrient and drug transport in disease with an emphasis on fungal pathogenesis and cancer. In every eukaryotic cell, cell stress and nutrient acquisition must be closely tied to the cell cycle to ensure a sufficient environment for mitosis. This coordination is of vital importance to rapidly dividing cells in stressful environments, such as pathogens or metastatic cancer cells, and is carried out by a complex network of transporters and transporter regulatory proteins. They form the basis of drug resistance and virulence in many diseases. We use a multidisciplinary approach to understanding these transport processes which includes cryo electron microscopy, biochemistry, and cell biology. Our ultimate goal is to understand these transporter networks and their regulation in sufficient detail to generate molecules that target them as antifungal or anticancer therapeutics.