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Kamiar Moin, Ph.D.
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RESEARCH INTERESTS:
Dr. Kamiar Moin is an Associate Professor in the Department of Pharmacology and Karmanos Cancer Institute. He is the Director of the Microscopy and Imaging Resources Laboratory of the School of Medicine, Wayne State University. He is also the Director of the Imaging and Cytometry Core Facilities of Karmanos Cancer Institute and the NIEHS Center for Molecular and Cellular Toxicology with Human Applications. In this capacity he serve as expert scientific consultant to the university community who wish to use the facility.
Dr. Moin’s own research interest is the role cysteine proteases and their endogenous, inhibitors (CPIs) may play in tumor progression and metastasis in the context of tumor microenvironment. As such Dr. Moin and his colleagues have been studying the intracellular distribution of the cysteine protease cathepsin B and CPIs in tumors and tumor cells. Cysteine proteases have been postulated to contribute to the dissolution of the basement membrane by the tumor cells and thus aid in the process of invasion and metastasis. This is in part due to observations by numerous investigators that in tumors cysteine proteases are associated with plasma membrane/endosomal fraction and are also secreted. By immunofluorescent confocal microscopy Dr. Moin and colleagues have found a peripheral distribution of cathepsin B in the highly metastatic tumors. In their studies of the intracellular distribution of the CPIs in murine hepatoma cells, Dr. Moin and colleagues found that the inhibitors were also present at the cell surface. However, their observations indicated that the CPIs were present at the apical surface, opposite to that where cathepsin B was found. These results, together with results from other studies, support the idea that CPIs may play a role in the regulation of cysteine protease activity in tumors. They also may suggest a protective role against the possible release of cysteine proteases by the host. He uses microscopy and imaging techniques extensively for his research endeavors.
Selected References:
Sloane, B.F., Sameni, M., Podgorski, I., Cavallo-Medved, D. and Moin, K.: Functional imaging of tumor proteolysis. Annu. Rev. Pharmacol. Toxicol. 46: 301-315, 2006.
Acuff, H.B., Sinnamon, M., Fingleton, B., Boone, B., Levy, S.E., Chen, X., Pozzi, A., Carbone, D., Moin, K., Sloane, B.F. and Matrisian, M.M. Analysis of host- and tumor-derived proteases using a custom dual species microarray reveals a protective role for stromal MMP12 in non-small cell lung cancer. Cancer Res. 66: 7968-7975, 2006.
Calkins, C., Day, N.A., Dosescu, J., Ren, W. Pl., Fridman, R., Sloane, B.F. and Moin, K.: Functional expression of recombinant human stefin A in bacterial and mammalian cells. Protein Express 52: 463-471, 2007.
Schwartz, D.R., Moin, K., Yao, B., Matrisian, L.M., Coussens, L.M., Bugge, T.H., Fingleton, B., Acuff, H.B., Sinnamon, M., Nassar, H., Platts, A., Krawetz, S.A., Linebaugh, B.E., and Sloane, B.F. The Hu/Mu ProtIn oligonucleotide microarray: application of a custom dual species array for mining protease, protease inhibitor and protease interactor gene expression in tumors and their microenvironment. Mol. Cancer Res 5: 443-454, 2007.
Moin, K., McIntyre, O. J., Matrisian, L. M., and Sloane, B.F. Fluorescent imaging in tumors. In: In vivo Imaging of Cancer Therapy. A. Shield and Price, P. eds. (Humana Press, Totowa, NJ USA), 281-302, 2007.
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