Mission

The Center's research mission is to investigate cellular signaling or cellular signal transduction. This is the process by which cells recognize external events and respond to the events with appropriate changes within the cell. An additional goal is to understand how abnormalities in cellular signaling are associated with specific disease processes. One of the major areas of strength on the Emory Campus is centered around investigators interested in cellular regulation and the cellular signal transduction pathways leading from the external surface of cells to the cell interior and the nucleus. However, prior to the advent of the Cell Center, this strength had never been explicitly recognized. The Center represents an experiment in fostering multidisciplinary research in which the Center gathers together individuals interested in signal transduction regardless of their Departmental affiliations, houses these investigators together in common space, and develops common, shared equipment and research resources to promote strong collaborative interaction between Center Investigators. In the process of pursuing these research goals, the Center Director, Investigators, and staff have:

• acted as a focal point for dissemination of knowledge and expertise associated with cellular signaling through in-house training and consultation, presentations on campus and at national and international conferences. The Center has been active in research outreach. Center facilities and expertise have been made available to research scientists throughout the Health Sciences Center who have research projects requiring the special knowledge or equipment located in the Center.
  
  
• promoted collaborative research interactions with the goal of establishing research groups which can compete for programmatic grants or which could attract other sorts of external funding (the Center is responsible for obtaining one such program project grant with another in the planning phase).
  
  
• promoted training of post-doctoral fellows (both Ph.D.s and M.D.s) and graduate students. (The Director of the Center is Co-Program Director of a post-doctoral training program in renal disease).
  
  
• promoted strong interactions between basic science and clinical science investigators and promoted translation of knowledge into clinical practice when appropriate.

In the future we also hope to translate our research into commercial products and seek University/industrial partnerships when possible.