Jayanta Debnath, MD

My laboratory focuses on how autophagy, a fundamental catabolic process in which a cell literally “eats itself”, contributes to cell survival and cancer progression. In eukaryotic cells, autophagy functions as a critical survival and metabolic adaptation pathway during stress. As a result, there is immense interest in manipulating autophagy to treat human diseases, such as cancer. We utilize cell biological, biochemical and proteomics approaches combined in vivo murine cancer models to pursue the following research goals: 1) Determine the role of autophagy in cancer metabolism, cell survival and oncogenic transformation. 2) Delineate the role of autophagy in breast cancer progression and metastasis in vivo. 3) Dissect the biological and biochemical functions of the molecules that control autophagy (called ATGs) to ultimately exploit this process for therapeutic benefit.