UNC School of Medicine faculty member will receive more than $2 million in NIH funding to continue exploration of a kind of protein that can contribute to cancer, heart disease, and diabetes.
Rebecca Berlow, PhD, an assistant professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics at UNC School of Medicine and a member of the Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center has received a Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award (MIRA) from the National Institutes of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS). The NIGMS is one of the institutes within the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
The Berlow Lab at UNC will receive more than $2 million over the next five years to continue their studies of intrinsically disordered proteins and how new medicines could control their activity inside human cells. These proteins lack a fixed shape, and when they do not work properly, they can contribute to diseases like cancer, heart disease, and diabetes.
“Our lab uses powerful, state-of-the-art experimental methods to understand the changing shapes of intrinsically disordered proteins,” said Berlow. “If we know what range of shapes they can adopt, and in what context, we can use that information to guide development of targeted therapies for controlling their functions. Because the properties of intrinsically disordered proteins are somewhat unique, our research also requires us to develop new technologies and methods for studying these exciting and important molecules.”
Dr. Berlow says having the support and resources to pursue new research directions will not only accelerate her lab’s overarching goal of understanding the functions of intrinsically disordered proteins but will also remove barriers for initiating future studies.
Media Contact: Brittany Phillips, Communications Specialist, UNC Health | UNC School of Medicine