Dr. Jon Cooper studies the networks of proteins that cells use to communicate with each other — networks that also play a critical role in the transformation of healthy cells into cancer cells. In particular, his team studies how some proteins undergo chemical changes that regulate how healthy and cancerous cells divide, become more specialized and migrate in the body. His lab has discovered several of the key steps that cells use to signal when and how to grow, providing the field with important clues about how this signaling process goes awry in cancer cells. This information could help researchers fix corrupted signaling pathways that lead to cancer and other diseases.