Kidney Cancer

In 2015, we started working on understanding mTOR, the target of several FDA approved inhibitors for kidney cancer. mTOR is responsible for regulating cell growth and metabolism and integrating signaling from a number of other genes that are commonly mutated in many other cancer types, as well.

mTOR itself is most commonly mutated in kidney cancer, but is also mutated in 2% of all other cancer types, potentially affecting millions of patients!

Projects 10491-10499 aim to help understand the effect these mutations, observed in the clinic, have on the structure and regulation of the protein. Understanding these mutants can provide a framework to understand which patients will respond to mTOR inhibitors already approved, and which mutants are best targeted by new drug development efforts.

mtor_domains
The X-ray crystal structure of mTOR that projects 10491-10499 are based one. The three major domains (Kinase, FAT and FRB) are highlighted in white, black and gold respectively. Key features of the kinase domain are shown in red and blue, with ATP shown in spheres representation.

 

  • Using Folding@home to understand the molecular mechanism of mTOR activating mutants in kidney cancer

    mTOR, a serine/threonine kinase first discovered in 1994, is a key signaling node that integrates a number of inputs to control processes such as cell growth and metabolism, among others.…

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  • mTOR: Projects 10491-10499

    In projects 10491-10499, the Chodera lab takes a look at mTOR, a serine/threonine kinase. The MTOR gene was originally discovered in yeast in 1991 and named TOR1/2 because it was…

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