R. Claudio Aguilar

Title:

Professor

PhD Granting Institution:

University of Buenos Aires

Contact:

Email Address: raguilar@purdue.edu
Office Phone: 765-496-3547
Lab Website Link: https://www.bio.purdue.edu/lab/aguilar/

Primary Training Group:

Membrane Biology

Secondary Training Groups:

Integrative Neuroscience, Cancer Biology

Research Areas:

The AGUILAR LAB focuses on understanding how the processes of vesicle trafficking and signaling are coordinated in healthy cells and how their faulty function leads to disease. Along with a strong interest in BASIC RESEARCH, one of our group's major goals is to apply the expertise acquired over more than 20 years of work in the field to the development of therapeutics against CANCER and DEVELOPMENTAL DISEASES.

Current Projects:

1-Role of protein condensates in vesicle trafficking and signal transduction. 2-Development of novel anticancer strategies based on control of endocytosis and protein sorting. 3-Mechanisms underlying genetic diseases and design of novel therapeutic strategies.

Importance of Interdisciplinary Research:

We are interested in addressing questions or solving problems relevant to our research areas (see above). Therefore, rather than focusing on a particular system or set of techniques, we would use any model or technology that we deem necessary to achieve such goals. In other words, we are very multidisciplinary using tools from the areas of genetics, biochemistry, cell biology, biophysics and computational biology/bioinformatics and relying on studies conducted in zebrafish, mice, dogs, yeast cells and mammalian cells. We study protein-protein interactions at molecular level by using bioinformatics, biochemical and genetic tools and we investigate the physiological relevance of these interactions by using functional assays, microscopy (of live and fixed cells) and genetic approaches.