Andrew P Capaldi, PhD
Dr. Capaldi obtained his Ph.D. in 1999 studying protein folding at the University of Leeds with Professor Sheena Radford. He gained additional post-doctoral training engineering yeast transcriptional networks with Erin O’Shea at Harvard University. During this time, he had an appointment as a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Fellow (2003-2006). In 2009, he secured an appointment as an Assistant Professor at the University of Arizona in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology where he started to dissect yeast metabolic circuitry using genetic, genomic, and proteomic methods. He was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in 2016.
Cancer Focus
Dr. Capaldi is interested in determining how cells sense stress and starvation signals, integrate the relevant information, and then decide (1) how fast to grow and (2) which pathways to activate to support growth and survival. To address these questions, his lab uses high-throughput genetic, genomic, modelling, live cell imaging, and biochemical approaches to investigate the circuitry of growth and survival signaling pathways. These circuits allow cells to process information and make decisions. Using yeast as a model system, they are able to reverse engineer the cell growth circuitry and identify basic biological mechanisms that drive cancer cell growth and survival and identify potential targets for investigation in cancer systems.