Nicolas Lehrbach, PhD

Dr. Nicholas Lehrbach’s research focuses on discovering the cellular pathways that normally function to remove unwanted proteins, and how they become mis-regulated in disease. High levels of abnormal or damaged proteins is a cellular feature of aging, cancer, adult-onset neurodegenerative diseases, and many rare genetic disorders. Dr. Lehrbach and his team use C. elegans to discover these pathways, understand how they work and investigate their roles in health and disease. Specifically, the team focuses on the regulation of the proteasome, an elaborate molecular machine that carries out the majority of targeted protein degradation in eukaryotic cells. By revealing how the proteasome is regulated, our work may lead to new ways to treat these diseases.