Laura Sanchez, associate professor of chemistry and biochemistry at UC Santa Cruz, has received funding for her research on nutrient sensing from the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation as recommended by the Paul G. Allen Frontiers Group, a division of the Allen Institute. Sanchez is among 16 new Allen Distinguished Investigators awarded a total of $10 million in research funding to support cutting-edge projects in protein lifespan and nutrient sensing.
Sanchez is working with Lydia Kisley at Case Western Reserve University on a project to study nutrients inside individual cells. Currently, scientists don’t have a good way to measure the distribution of nutrients in cells. Sanchez and Kisley are leading the development of a technique to address this problem by physically expanding cells—picture a cell stretched on silly putty—which allows them to capture details of nutrient location and amount in those cells.
Their new method is called Expansion Mass Spectrometry, and the scientists plan to use it to study nutrients in and around ovarian cancer cells to better understand metabolism in these cancer cells and how the cells’ local environments influence nutrient location and amounts. Novel techniques like this could propel understanding of the basic biology of cells as well as how metabolism or nutrition processing goes wrong in disease.
Sanchez’s lab at UCSC focuses on the use of analytical mass spectrometry techniques, such as tandem mass spectrometry and imaging mass spectrometry, to elucidate the chemistry by which cells and microbes communicate and coordinate biological functions in complex backgrounds. This year, in addition to the Allen Distinguished Investigator award, Sanchez has received the 2022 ACS Infectious Diseases Young Investigator Award and the American Society of Pharmacognosy’s 2022 Matt Suffness Young Investigator Award.
Sanchez earned her B.A. in chemistry at Whitman College and her Ph.D. in chemistry and biochemistry at UC Santa Cruz. She was an associate professor of pharmaceutical sciences at the University of Illinois Chicago before joining the UCSC faculty in 2021.
The Allen Distinguished Investigator program was launched in 2010 by the late philanthropist Paul G. Allen to back creative, early-stage research projects in biology and medical research that would not otherwise be supported by traditional research funding programs. Including the new awards, a total of 130 Allen Distinguished Investigators have been appointed during the past 12 years. Each award spans three years of research funding.
