If you don't know how a human cell is supposed to work, it's hard to offer a good explanation when the cell goes haywire -- as it does in cancer. That's why a Florida State University College of Medicine researcher has been awarded a $1.2 million grant to explore the role of centrosomes and cilia in cell division and development and their connections to human disease.
Tim Megraw, a veteran researcher who joined the College of Medicine as an associate professor in August, received the four-year grant from the National Institutes of Health this month. The grant continues through August 2013.
The focus of Megraw's work is cell division. Cancer occurs when renegade cells start dividing uncontrollably. Anti-cancer drugs such as Taxol, Megraw noted, target the microtubule, a key molecule that regulates cell division. Along with other areas of focus, he's looking into microtubule regulation and its relationship to another component of the cell called the centrosome.
"We're studying how microtubules are regulated in cells normally," Megraw said, "and the key roles that the centrosomin family of proteins play in this process. Centrosomes are the main centers for organizing microtubules. So we're interested in how centrosomes are assembled and regulated. Both of those goals are outlined in this new grant."
Remarkably, centrosomins regulate not only centrosome assembly and their functions in cytoskeleton assembly, but also the replication of centrosomes in the cell cycle.