Professor Peter J. Mullen
Peter J. Mullen, Ph.D. is Assistant Professor of Microbiology and Immunology at the Keck School of Medicine, and Assistant Professor of Gerontology at the Leonard Davis School of Gerontology at the University of Southern California (USC).
He has spent over 10 years studying the regulation and role of metabolism in tumor growth and viral infections.
Pete set up his lab Mullen Lab in 2021, where his overall goal is to understand how whole-body metabolism alters respiratory virus replication, cancer progression, and aging. By elucidating specific requirements for different nutrients, he aims to identify and develop novel strategies that reduce disease and increase lifespan.
In his lab, he is researching Aging, Viruses, and Cancer. With Aging, he is trying to understand how metabolism changes throughout life. He is using metabolomic, lipidomic, and genetic techniques to define age-specific changes in metabolism in multiple organs. He is also uncovering metabolic differences between males and females that may explain why females have increased lifespan and healthspan compared to males.
Read The Aging Tumor Metabolic Microenvironment, Differential integrated stress response and asparagine production drive symbiosis and therapy resistance of pancreatic adenocarcinoma cells, and The Metabolic Relationship Between Viral Infection and Cancer.
In his virus research, he focuses on respiratory infections. New strategies are needed to combat respiratory viruses that can become resistant to current therapies and to prepare for future emerging respiratory virus threats. He exploits the vulnerability of viruses by altering whole-body metabolism and manipulating dietary nutrients in multiple models of infection to identify metabolic vulnerabilities that could treat viral diseases. Read Methionine restriction forces Epstein-Barr virus out of latency.
With his cancer research, he focuses on age-specific changes in metabolism that contribute to cancer. He is using virus-driven cancer models in vitro and in vivo, using genetic and metabolic techniques to develop new targeted therapeutic strategies. As sex is also a risk factor for developing some cancers, he is also asking if there are sex-specific differences in metabolism that contribute to cancers in people who are elderly.
Pete earned his Ph.D. from the University of Basel in Switzerland in 2011, with his thesis Molecular mechanisms of statin-induced myotoxicity. He did his postdoc with Heather Christofk at UCLA.
Read The interplay between cell signaling and the mevalonate pathway in cancer, AML cells have low spare reserve capacity in their respiratory chain that renders them susceptible to oxidative metabolic stress, and Extracellular Matrix Remodeling Regulates Glucose Metabolism through TXNIP Destabilization.
Visit his Homepage, Google Scholar page, and CTSI page. Follow him on ResearchGate and Twitter.
