Dr. Joel K. Yisraeli

I am fascinated with how embryos manage to generate diversity in an organized fashion.  The establishment of the embryonic axes early in development helps provide the positional information necessary for subsequent differentiation.  We have identified and we are currently studying a family of proteins called VICKZ that can read these early positional signals and help traffic RNA molecules to specific locations within cells. In humans, VICKZ proteins are expressed during embryonic development, turned off after birth, but re-expressed in many kinds of cancer, where they are associated with cell migration and metastasis.  These proteins represent highly specific biomarkers of transformed cells, and we are developing tools that will enable us to eliminate cells expressing VICKZ proteins.