Damon Runyon Researchers

Dr. Gu’s lab studies how cells regulate the destruction of proteins without using the typical "ubiquitin" tag, which signals that a protein should be transported to the proteasome for digestion and recycling of amino acids. The lab has discovered a new pathway, the midnolin-proteasome pathway, that helps degrade key proteins involved in cancer, including several linked to blood cancers like multiple myeloma. The lab’s goal is to understand this pathway better and explore how it might be used to develop new treatments, especially for blood cancers, by targeting specific proteins that drive disease.