Sivakumar Vallabhapurapu Research Area:

We work in the areas of Cancer Biology and Immunology. The focus is on how different signaling pathways regulate specific gene expression signatures in different cancer cell types and in the immune cells. While our major focus is on NF-kB signaling, which is abnormally activated in many cancer types and is the Central Pillar of the Immune system, we also work on different other signaling pathways such as the MAPK, AKT, mTOR etc. Further, we try to understand how the cross-talk between such signaling pathways contribute to cancer progression and at the same time also contribute to normal homeostatic regulation in the Immune System. Role of different signaling pathways in normal cancer cells and cancer stem cells will be studied. We employ transgenic, knockout and other mouse models as well as invitro Molecular Biology, Cell Biology and Biochemical experiments (such as protein-protein interactions) for our study. For a representative figure of our study on NF-kB signaling in the progression of Multiple Myeloma please see the Figure.