About the Investigator:

Dr. Ronit Ilouz is an expert in protein kinases, which are key targets for anti-cancer drugs. Her lab investigates the molecular and cellular mechanisms of protein kinases and how they are deregulated in disease. She completed her MSc and PhD degrees at Tel Aviv University, where she studied innovative strategies for designing substrate-specific protein kinase inhibitors for cancer. After postdoctoral training at Howard Hughes Medical Institute, University of California, San Diego, she returned to Israel and assumed a position at Bar-Ilan University, where she is now a principal investigator leading an independent laboratory in the Faculty of Medicine.

About the Research:

Deregulation of signaling pathways is the hallmark of all cancer types. Protein kinases are key signaling molecules, and it is, therefore, no surprise that protein kinases have emerged as one of the most successful drug targets for cancer therapy. Although most kinase inhibitors have been developed against a specific kinase target, many inhibitors lack specificity and inhibit several or many different kinases, causing unwanted side effects.

The goal of Dr. Ilouz’s project is to understand how two important kinase signaling pathways are coupled in the cell to maintain accurate and specific cellular tasks and how these accurate cell responses become unregulated in cancer cells. Dr. Ilouz and her team are using cutting-edge and advanced imaging techniques to map protein locations in the cell using high-resolution microscopy. Identifying the specific location of these proteins within the cells surrounding the tumor and the cellular partners with which they interact should provide an opportunity for precise manipulation in the treatment of prostate cancer using specific kinase inhibitors, without off-target effects.