COCHRAN LABORATORY

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Department of Physiology, Tufts University School of Medicine

136 Harrison Ave., Boston, Massachusetts, 02111, USA

Lab and Office: Jaharis Building, Room 708

Directions: Auto, MBTA, Foot, weather


Principal Investigator: Brent Cochran, Ph.D.,

Professor of Physiology

PHONE: (617) 636-0442 (office), (617) 636-2118(lab)

FAX: (617) 636-6745

EMAIL: COCHRAN@cochranlab.org


Coworkers:

Deepa Bhavsar, Postdoctoral Fellow

Maciej Kotecki, Postdoctoral Fellow

Amy Simon, Clinical Fellow

Liza Konnikova, MD/PhD student

Matthew Kruger, Research Technician

Mariano Severgnini, Research Technician

Liliana Rozo, Research Technician

Former lab members

Jay Lee, MD/PhD Student (grad 2002)

Dae-Won Kim, Graduate Student (grad 2000)

Joan Abrams Graduate Student(grad 2000)

Satoe Takahashi, Research Technician


Research Interests:

My lab is broadly interested in how growth factors such as PDGF regulate cell growth. For several years we have been working on how the c-fos promoter is regulated. We discovered a growth factor inducible called SIF which turns out to be composed of STAT family transcription factors. We also study the yeast pheromone response pathway which is remarkably analogous to some aspects of fos regulation. Recent attention has focussed on the role of TFII-I in c-fos regulation. We have also been interested in the c-myc gene and have recently found a novel myc interacting protein using the yeast two-hybrid system. Other interests of the lab include the development of new genetic strategies for studying mammalian cells and elucidating the relationship between growth factor mediated signal transduction and the cell cycle machinery. A new interest of the lab is the development of an annotated database of genes called MedStract in collaboration with a computational linguistics group at Brandeis.


Click for a list of projects ongoing.


Useful Info

Projects

  • Mechanism of activation of Stats by PDGF
  • Regulation of c-fos by the Jak/Stat pathway
  • Cell cycle regulation of growth factor signalling
  • Activation of STATs by oxidative stress
  • Role of Cdc37 in signal transduction and the cell cycle
  • Role of TFII-I in c-fos regulation and signal transduction
  • Development of the annotated gene database called MedStract


Selected Publications:

Konnikova L, Simeone MC, Kruger MM, Kotecki M, Cochran BH. 2005. Signal transducer and activator of transcription 3 (STAT3) regulates human telomerase reverse transcriptase (hTERT) expression in human cancer and primary cells. Cancer Res. 65(15):6516-20. Abstract

Konnikova L, Kotecki M, Kruger MM, Cochran BH. 2003. Knockdown of STAT3 expression by RNAi induces apoptosis in astrocytoma cells. BMC Cancer 2:23. free full text, pdf

Simon AR, Takahashi S, Severgnini M, Fanburg BL, Cochran BH. 2002. Role of the JAK-STAT pathway in PDGF-stimulated proliferation of human airway smooth muscle cells. Am J Physiol Lung Cell Mol Physiol Jun;282(6):L1296-304. abstract, full text

Kim, D.-W. and B.H. Cochran. 2001. Jak2 activates tfii-i and regulates its interaction with extracellular signal-regulated kinase. Mol Cell Biol. 2001 May 15;21(10):3387-97. abstract, pdf

Simon AR, Vikis HG, Stewart S, Fanburg BL, Cochran BH, Guan KL. 2000. Regulation of STAT3 by direct binding to the rac1 GTPase. Science 2000 Oct 6;290(5489):144-7. Abstract, pdf

Kim, D.-W. and B.H. Cochran. 2000. ERK binds to TFII-I and regulates its activation of the c-fos promoter. Mol. Cell Biol. 20(4):1140-8. abstract, pdf

Kotecki, M., P. S. Reddy, and B. H. Cochran. 1999. Isolation and characterization of a near-haploid human cell line. Exp Cell Res, Nov 1;252(2):273-80. abstract, pdf

Grammatikakis, N., Lin, J.-H., Grammatikakis, A., Tsichlis, P. N. and Cochran, B. H. (1999). p50cdc37 acting in concert with Hsp90 is required for Raf-1 function. Mol. Cell Biol., 19, 1661-72. abstract, pdf

Kim, D.-W., Cheriyath, V., Roy, A. L. and Cochran, B. H. (1998). TFII-I enhances activation of the c-fos promoter through interactions with upstream elements. Mol. Cell. Biol. 18, 3310-3320.abstract, pdf

Simon, A, Rai, U., Fanburg, B. Cochran BH. 1998. Activation of the JAK/STAT pathway by reactive oxygen species. Am. J. of Physiology,44, C1640-C1652. abstract, (Download full text PDF file)

Hayes TE, Kitchen AM, Cochran BH. 1987. Inducible binding of a factor to the c-fos regulatory region. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. (USA) 84: 1272-1276.

Sengupta P, Cochran BH. 1991. MATalpha1 can mediate gene activation by a-mating factor. Genes and Dev. 5: 1924-1934.

Meyer, D. J., Campbell, G., Cochran, B. H., Argetsinger, L., Larner, A. C., Finbloom, D. S., Carter-Su, C. and Schwartz, J. 1993. Growth hormone induces a DNA-binding factor related to the interferon-stimulated 91-kDa transcription factor. J. Biol. Chem. 269, 4701-4704.

Abstracts


Physiology Dept.**** Health Science Campus


visits since August 7, 2005