The toll that cancer takes on society is clear; it is the second leading cause of death in the U.S. and is associated with high medical costs, not to mention the physical and emotional expense. Similarly, Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) is the sixth leading cause of death, slowly stripping away memories and the personality of those afflicted with it, with obvious negative impacts on families and friends. Our group is currently exploring the relationship between cancer and Alzheimer’s Disease, since the likelihood of developing one appears to be inversely related to developing the other. While some of this may be age-related (patients with cancer may not survive long enough to develop AD, which more commonly afflicts the older population), it is possible that AD patients may possess some characteristic that is protective against cancer.  There are many neurotransmitters, signaling factors, and proteins involved in each disease, and some are involved in both. A common characteristic of Alzheimer’s Disease patients is formation of aggregates or plaques of the protein called  amyloid in the brain. The goal of this project is to synthesize smaller fragments of amyloid and test their effects on A549 lung cancer cells to determine whether they kill these tumor cells. This can help us narrow down what part of amyloid is necessary, which may later be developed into a treatment.

Dr. Backues is Associate Professor of Chemistry whose lab studies autophagy – a process of cellular “self-eating” that helps cells survive starvation as well as getting rid of damaged or malfunctioning subcellular components that would otherwise be toxic to the cell. In humans, autophagy is part of our defense against infections pathogens and cancer, as well as helping to prevent neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. Autophagy is carried out by a suite of 30+ “Atg” proteins that create the autophagosome – a double-membrane vesicle that surrounds cargo in the cytoplasm (the body of the cell) and then delivers it to the vacuole/lysosome (the stomach of the cell) where it is broken down and the nutrients are recycled. The Backues lab seeks to understand how this process works by studying the functions of key Atg proteins in baker’s yeast, an easy-to-work with model system that has most of the same autophagy proteins as humans. Current projects include studying how Atg11 interacts with Atg9 to start the process of autophagosome formation, and whether the enzymes Atg10 and Atg3  control the autophagosome size or autophagosome  number.

According to the World Health Organization and the United States Department of Agriculture, the lack of development of new antibiotics against multi-drug resistant pathogens is a major cause for concern. Many life-threatening infections are becoming increasingly difficult to treat, including methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). Using a combination of different microbe isolation techniques and organic extracts of secondary metabolites, our lab mines soil  microorganisms in the search for potentially new antibiotics to treat these deadly infections

Research on DNA repair mechanisms is essential for understanding the fundamental processes that contribute to evolution and disease. The Casper lab at EMU studies repair of breaks in DNA at a site on yeast chromosome III called “Fragile Site 2” (FS2). For complex reasons, this site is frequently broken when the process of copying DNA is slowed. Repair of broken FS2 can result in a translocation; that is, a segment of another chromosome can be transferred onto chromosome III. Our current projects involve analyzing how and why these translocation events    happen during repair of FS2.