Dr. Jong-In Park, Professor in the Department of Biochemistry at the Medical College of Wisconsin, will present a talk about his work entitled, “Inducing mortality by targeting mortalin in cancer.”

The abstract is as follows:

Mitochondria possess powerful cell death machinery that various stresses can activate. Because oncogenesis requires reprogramming in mitochondrial metabolism, it is conceivable that transforming cells inevitably experience mitochondrial stress and are forced to develop a stress tolerance mechanism(s). We hypothesize that upregulation of mortalin, a mitochondrial chaperone also known as HSPA9 or GRP75, is a mechanism that protects tumor cells from lethal mitochondrial stress that occurs in the face of MEK/ERK deregulation. There is a growing interest in exploiting a mitochondrial death mechanism to induce cancer cell death. In my talk, I will present and discuss that mortalin is a candidate target for implementing a strategy to exploit mitochondrial death mechanisms in MEK/ERK-deregulated tumor cells.

The presentation will begin at 4:00 PM in Lapham N101, preceded by an informal reception from 3:45 – 4:00 PM.