Page 30 - Hormel Report 2021

Jarrod French, Ph.D.
“Science is about building bridges, not fences – strong collaborations enable us to bring together a more diverse team with broader expertise.
This gives us the capability to tackle challenging
problems that would be otherwise intractable.”
Jarrod French
30 | THE HORMEL INSTITUTE // Nucleotide Metabolism and
Drug Discovery
SECTION LEADER / ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR
UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA
Our lab uses an integrative and highly collaborative approach to identify the molecular determinants of protein
function and dysfunction. We are particularly interested in proteins and protein complexes that regulate metabolic processes such as nucleotide biosynthesis, the discovery and development of immunomodulatory therapies, and the mechanisms that certain photorecep- tors use for signal transduction. We take a best tool for the job approach, drawing on the broad skill set of our team and
the wide array of chemical, biochemical and biophysical techniques at our disposal. The overarching goal of our work is to exploit the knowl- edge that we obtain in these fundamental investigations to improve the standard of care for a range of devastating human diseases.
Current research projects
Assembly mechanisms, regulation and function
of higher order protein structures of nucleotide metabolism – we are working to understand how large structures of proteins, called biomolecular condensates are assembled, organized and traf- ficked in cells (Fig 1). These types of structures help to regulate, both in space and time, how important cellular nutrients are made and broken down. We focus on the purine metabolic path- way because this pathway is highly upregulated in most cancers.
Modulation of the purine metabolic proteins, FGAMS and PPAT, to improve liver cancer prognosis – we have recently observed that there is a correlation between liver cancer survival rate and the expression level of two proteins involved in making purine nucleotides. We are working to identify how these proteins contribute to poor prognosis and hope to use our findings to devel- op new prognostic tests and identify new ways to treat advanced stage liver cancer.