Department of Developmental and Regenerative Biology

Physics and specialty biophysics.
While a researcher at the Institute of Cell Biology and Pathology "Nicolae Simionescu" in Bucharest, Romania, I received a Ph.D degree in cell and molecular biology. Since 1991, I have worked in the field of nucleocytoplasmic transport in mammalian cells. Before 1997, in the laboratory of Dr. G'nter Blobel at the Rockefeller University in New York. In 1997, I joined the Institute for Gene Therapy and Molecular Medicine as an Assistant Professor with a secondary appointment in the Department of Cell Biology and Anatomy.

My area of expertise, nucleocytoplasmic transport, encompasses a number of distinct pathways allowing the import and export of the cell nucleus of various classes of proteins and nucleic acids. These processes are essential as means of directing cellular components to their proper location and as steps in signal transduction pathways (i.e. for timely translocation into the nucleus of protein kinases and transcription factors). The nucleocytoplasmic transport systems characterized to date consist of soluble carriers (karyopherins) which bind their cargoes in the cytosol or in the nucleoplasm, and then transiently dock them to a specific set of nuclear pore proteins. My objective is to identify new transport pathways and to characterize their components, modes of action, and physiological significance.

More recently I have become interested in the development of synthetic vectors for gene therapy and the study of their intracellular transport.