QBI presents a seminar with Carolyn Cummins, Associate Professor of Drug Development & Disease Diagnostics at the University of Toronto.

Dr. Cummins studies nuclear receptors and their role in the development of diabetes, obesity and other metabolic diseases, with the goal of identifying potential therapeutic targets in disease pathways and developing drugs to prevent or treat these conditions. In particular, her research focuses on the glucocorticoid receptor, liver X receptor (LXR) and peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor (PPAR). Her lab is uncovering the signalling pathways of nuclear receptors and what happens at the molecular and physiological level when signalling goes wrong. 

Cummins' work has led to the development and preclinical testing of several drugs for the treatment of metabolic diseases. Her team discovered that nuclear hormone signalling can induce alternative splicing during the process of translating genetic information into proteins, and their pioneering work investigating this previously unknown relationship is highlighting new potential drug targets. Furthermore, their findings on global and genome-wide effects of nuclear receptor signalling will have important impact on future research and drug development.

Talk Title: Integrative Methods to Identify Temporal and Spatial Regulation of Nuclear Receptors: Applications to Metabolic Disease

Host: James Fraser