The uncontrolled growth and metastasis of cancer cells is driven by changes in the genes expressed by these cells, relative to cells in healthy tissue. Understanding these gene expression changes provides key insights into the behaviors of cancer cells and guides the design of anti-cancer therapies.

Dr. Ingolia is studying a cellular process called translation, which generates protein from RNA. Important gene expression changes result from differences in the translation of mRNAs into functional proteins, rather than the abundance of these mRNAs in the cell. He has developed innovative techniques to comprehensively profile translation in cells and proposes to apply this approach to understand the gene expression differences between normal and cancerous cells. These gene expression changes will reveal distinctive features of cancer cells that explain their pathological behavior and potentially expose new vulnerabilities of these cells that could be targeted to treat cancer.