Research

"This work opens the door to a completely new class of brain therapies. Instead of using synthetic drugs or viral vectors, we’re enlisting the brain’s immune cells as precision delivery vehicles." (Rob Spitale)

"My research explores how cells regulate protein function and degradation through methylation – a process previously overlooked in lysosomal proteolysis. This discovery has the potential to reshape our understanding of cell signaling and protein homeostasis, with implications from genetic heart disease to new therapeutic strategies." (Lauren Albrecht)

"This developing technology has been used on mice, with the hope that these light-up molecules can help illuminate how viruses replicate or even how memories form in the brain." (Andrej Luptak)

"The first step in saying something’s going to happen in a cell – the cell is going to grow, adapt, change or anything like that – underlying all of that is RNA." (Andrej Luptak)

"Until now, little was known about how and when RNA does what it does inside cells. It turns out it’s been really quite difficult to know in living cells, and especially in living organisms, when RNA is turned on and where it goes. If you wanted to study the first 30 seconds or the first minute – nobody knows. But we provide a tool. You can now visualize it." (Andrej Luptak)

"By targeting key processes like RNA splicing and modification, we not only advance our understanding of the molecular disruptions behind HD but also open the door to potential new treatments for neurodegenerative diseases more broadly. It was a really important collaboration to bring chemical and genomic tools from my lab and merge them with Leslie’s powerful and robust model systems to nail down this novel mechanism." (Rob Spitale)

"I am most excited about translating microproteins into therapeutic efforts, hopefully as both biomarkers and drug targets. Once this barrier is crossed, I think interest in the field will expand dramatically." (Thomas Martínez)