Alexander Valvezan

Structural basis for mTORC1 activation on the lysosomal membrane - Nature Cryo-electron microscopy was used to study human mechanistic target of rapamycin complex 1 (mTORC1) activation on lysosomal membranes, showing progressive recruitment by RAG–Ragulator, RHEB and R...

Finally in @nature.com 🎉
We uncovered step-wise mTORC1 activation on membrane: RAG–Ragulator recruits, RHEB pushes closer, and direct membrane contacts by RAPTOR + mTOR trigger full kinase activity.👉 The membrane is not just a platform — it’s part of the mechanism.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Congrats on this awesome work!

Congrats on this awesome work!

📢Interested in #CancerMetabolism and #leukemia using mouse models in vivo? Come join us!! We're looking for a #postdoc to help us drive one of our multiple currently funded projects! Friends & colleagues, please RT!
👇👇👇
jobs.rutgers.edu/postings/260...

Transient APC/C inactivation by mTOR boosts glycolysis during cell cycle entry - Nature APC/C activity is transiently inhibited to generate a pulse of glycolysis that is required for mammalian cell cycle entry.

Very cool paper.

Transient APC/C inactivation by mTOR boosts glycolysis during cell cycle entry

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

I Was Just About To When My Grant Was Cut. We ask researchers to send us their stories of what they were working on when their research grant was cut. Today, we share the stories of Tashara and Brendan.

Just two of thousands of such stories. substack.com/home/post/p-...

Conservation and divergence of metabolic phenotypes between patient tumours and matched xenografts - Nature Metabolism Rao and Cai et al. perform a detailed metabolic comparison between primary tumours from patients and their matching xenografts, which identify conserved as well as divergent metabolic patterns.

1/Patient-derived xenografts (PDXs) are used in preclinical testing of cancer therapies, including metabolic therapies. We determined which metabolic properties are retained, and which are lost, when melanomas from patients are implanted and passaged as PDXs in mice.
www.nature.com/articles/s42...

Inspired predominantly by insightful cryo-EM structures from Yanhui Xu’s lab and @drellisdon.bsky.social on the TSC protein complex, which we have been focused on the regulation of upstream of mTORC1 for 23 years and counting. Enjoy!

Congrats to Yann Cormerais and the entire lab for this publication on a new mouse model that disconnects the primary signal from PI3K to mTORC1, involving Akt-mediated phosphorylation of TSC2, which I discovered as a postdoc in Lew Cantley's lab 23 years ago. authors.elsevier.com/a/1lDFh5Sx5g...

Congratulations Brendan, Yann and everyone else involved!

Happy to share the copy-edited version of our story uncovering an ACLY-MYC feedforward loop in T-ALL! @bloodneoplasia.bsky.social @rutgerscancer.bsky.social @dasilva-diz.bsky.social

doi.org/10.1016/j.bn...

Hello BlueSky, finally joined and looking to reconnect with everyone here!