Zeribe Nwosu

Zeribe Nwosu is an NIH Cornell Faculty Institutional Recruitment for Sustainable Transformation (FIRST) Assistant Professor in the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics. He obtained his PhD in Molecular and Cellular Biology from the University of Heidelberg, Germany, where he studied liver cancer metabolism in the lab of Prof. Steven Dooley. Thereafter, he joined the labs of Dr. Costas Lyssiotis and Prof. Marina Pasca di Magliano at the University of Michigan, where he did postdoctoral research focusing on pancreatic cancer metabolism, the role of tumor microenvironment and therapeutic prospects of targeting metabolism. He joined the faculty at Cornell in 2023. He is a member of the graduate fields of Biochemistry, Molecular, and Cell Biology (BMCB), Genetics, Genomics and Development (GGD), and Biomedical and Biological Sciences (BBS).

Research Focus

The Nwosu lab focuses on cancer metabolism and therapy. The goal of the lab is to identify and study novel mechanisms through which cancer cells acquire/use nutrients and to explore strategies for disrupting such processes for cancer therapy. Specific interests include to identify and characterize nutrient transporters, novel enzymes, oncogenic signaling, transcriptional or epigenetic regulators or cellular components in the tumor microenvironment (e.g., immune cells, fibroblasts) that facilitate cancer cells ability to ‘feed’ and grow. We are also interested in pursuing novel molecular targets by integrating functional genomics and drug screening using cancer models. The lab is mainly focused on pancreatic cancer. Methods include metabolomics and other omics techniques, gene interference (e.g., CRISPR/Cas9, shRNA, siRNA), growth and other phenotypic assays, cell culture, mouse models, microscopy, flow cytometry, histology, and bioinformatics.

Research Questions and Interests

The sort of questions that capture the lab’s overall interest and direction are:

• How do cancer cells feed and what do they preferably feed on?
• When the preferred nutrient is limited or lacking, which alternative nutrients enable cancer cells to still survive?
• Which transporters mainly enable cancer cells to acquire nutrients and grow?
• Which transcriptional and or epigenetic factors are the master regulators of cancer metabolism and growth?
• How could cancer metabolism be exploited to overcome drug resistance in cancer?
• Does metabolic diseases such as diabetes and obesity impact cancer?
• Does the consumption of certain diets impact cancer and can that be exploited to treat cancer?
• Are there new or existing drugs that can selectively block nutrient acquisition in cancer to improve therapy?

Undergraduate students, research fellows (including prospective postdoctoral fellows) and potential collaborators that are interested in the above or similar research questions should please feel free to contact Dr. Zeribe Nwosu directly. Graduate students are advised to first check the websites of the graduate fields of Biochemistry, Molecular, and Cell Biology (BMCB) and Genetics, Genomics and Development (GGD), and apply directly to those fields if eligible.