Lee M. Graves PhD

Dr. Graves has over 20 years experience studying protein kinases and protein phosphorylation. In addition to mentoring students and post-docs as a PI of a cancer research lab in Pharmacology, Dr. Graves is the current faculty director of the UNC Michael Hooker Proteomics Core Facility. The overall objective of his research is to study dysregulation of protein kinases in disease. This includes applying methods of purifying and identifying kinase activity “signatures” en masse by quantitative mass spectrometry and mapping post-translational modifications. This includes applying novel technologies such as kinase inhibitor bead (KIBs) affinity chromatography, studying protein- protein interactions, titanium and phosphotyrosine peptide capture and methods of ITRAQ/SILAC quantitative mass spectrometry. Dr. Graves has direct access to 3 ABI 4800 MALDI TOF/TOFs and an LTQ-OrbiTrap mass spectometers as well as an ABI Q-TRAP and LC-TEMPO. Dr. Graves also has a long-standing interest in Lyn and other Src family kinases and their regulation in cancer. Thus Dr. Graves is well suited to support the proposed research to study protein kinases and protein phosphorylation in pancreatic cancer.