The Brown laboratory is focused on defining the cell signaling network that initiates production of phosphatidic acid upon stimulation of cell surface receptors.  This powerful second messenger has been shown to mediate cell cycle progression, survival pathways, and membrane biogenesis. Computational lipidomics is a systems biology based research area pioneered by our group and we utilize this mass spectrometry based lipid analysis technology to guide our work on cellular signaling and metabolic networks.

The laboratory is composed of a group of dedicated senior chemists (analytical and synthetic) and computational (mathematicians and physicists) lab members that are responsible for the mass spectrometry aspects of the laboratory’s work.  We have a number of postdoctoral fellows, graduate students, and technical staff that are involved in the cell signaling projects.

The detailed research interests of the laboratory include: (1) development of inhibitors of phospholipase D (PLD); (2) defining the cell surface receptor signaling pathways that activate PLD; (3) understanding the molecular mechanism of PLD catalytic activity and enzymology; and (4) mass spectrometry based analysis to define the cascade of temporal lipid changes that result from activation of signaling pathways.  These projects have direct relevance to inflammatory processes in macrophages, neurodegenerative diseases, metabolic disorders, viral infection, and human cancers. With our collaborators we are committed to developing small molecular modulators as well as identifying novel protein and lipid targets to facilitate therapeutic treatments of human diseases. The work in the laboratory ranges from chemical biology and enzymology to translational research on human biopsies for personalized medicine.