I earned my Ph.D. degree in Molecular Medicine from the Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute in La Jolla in 2009, under the guidance of Dr. John C. Reed. Immediately thereafter, I embarked on my postdoctoral career in Dr. Tony Hunter’s laboratory at the Salk Institute, also in La Jolla. My postdoctoral project endeavors to uncover the role of autophagy in cancer, and the accompanying elaborate interplay between tumor suppressors and transcriptional repressors. Outside the lab, besides pondering on scientific themes, my other passions include reading books by my favorite British authors, British cars, and listening to Mozart and Beethoven while driving north along the dramatic California coast, bringing energy and inspiration back to the bench.
Lorena Puto
Research Associate
Summary
Published articles Show More
Cancer-associated loss-of-function mutations implicate DAPK3 as a tumor-suppressing kinase.
Published in Cancer Research
Cancer kinome sequencing studies have identified several protein kinases predicted to possess driver (i.e., causal) mutations. Using bioinformatic applications, we have pinpointed DAPK3 (ZIPK) as a novel cancer-associated kinase with functional mutations. Evaluation of nonsynonymous point mutations, discovered in DAPK3 in various tumors (T112M, D16...
Transcriptional Repressor DAXX Promotes Prostate Cancer Tumorigenicity via Suppression of Autophagy.
Published in Journal of Biological Chemistry
The DAXX transcriptional repressor was originally associated with apoptotic cell death. However, recent evidence that DAXX represses several tumor suppressor genes, including the DAPK1 and DAPK3 protein kinases, and is up-regulated in many cancers argues that a pro-survival role may predominate in a cancer context. Here, we report that DAXX has pot...
The DAXX co-repressor is directly recruited to active regulatory elements genome-wide to regulate autophagy programs in ...
Published in Oncoscience
While carcinoma of the prostate is the second most common cause of cancer death in the US, current methods and markers used to predict prostate cancer (PCa) outcome are inadequate. This study was aimed at understanding the genome-wide binding and regulatory role of the DAXX transcriptional repressor, recently implicated in PCa. ChIP-Seq analysis of...
