SURF Faculty Mentors

Dr. Costas is Associate Professor of Molecular & Integrative Physiology. His lab studies the biochemical pathways and metabolic requirements that enable tumor survival and growth and, in particular, how this information can be used to design targeted therapies. Among his many contributions, Dr. Lyssiotis demonstrated that pancreatic cancers are addicted to glucose and glutamine and use these nutrients in previously undescribed pathways to make DNA and to generate free radical-combating antioxidants, respectively.

Dr. Michele is Professor of Molecular & Integrative Physiology at the University of Michigan Medical School. Dr. Michele's laboratory is interested in the molecular mechanisms of human diseases of skeletal and cardiac muscle. Currently, we are focused on the mechanisms of muscular dystrophy associated with mutations in the transmembrane dystrophin-glycoprotein complex and abnormal glycosylation of the central protein in this complex, dystroglycan. The cellular mechanisms of dystroglycan modification and the resulting pathways leading to muscular dystrophy and cardiomyopathy are currently unclear. We are exploring these pathways using spontaneous mutant, traditional and conditional targeted mouse models as well as human patient samples.

Dr. Michele is NOT accepting summer fellows for 2023.

Dr. William (Bill) Rainey is the Jerome Conn Professor in the Departments of Molecular and Integrative Physiology and Internal Medicine. Dr. Rainey’s group is recognized for its research on the adrenal gland, specializing on adrenal zonation, steroid production and tumor development. The lab group includes post-graduate clinician and basic scientists as well as graduate and undergraduate students. Summer Undergraduate Research Fellows (SURFs) would join ongoing research projects that are applying genomic and metabolomic approaches toward defining the mechanisms controlling normal and pathologic adrenal function.

Dr. Shah is Horace W Davenport Collegiate Professor of Molecular & Integrative Physiology at the University of Michigan Medical School. Dr. Shah's laboratory seeks to understand the mechanisms by which cellular oxygen levels regulate colon and liver cancer. Regulation of hypoxia-mediated genes is dependent on the nuclear transcription factor, hypoxia inducible factor (HIF). HIF signaling is critical in the adaptive response to low oxygen levels by activating genes involved in metabolism, angiogenesis, cell proliferation and cell survival. We have developed novel animal models to study accurately the role of hypoxia and HIF in the liver and intestine-derived cancers. In these animal models we have shown that increased HIF signaling leads to liver and intestinal inflammation and chronic induction of HIF signaling leads to vascularized tumors. Our current goals are to identify molecular mechanisms by which HIF regulates colon and liver inflammation and assess if HIF signaling is a critical link between inflammation and cancer.