Richard N Sifers
Professor
Baylor College of Medicine
USA
Biography
Professor:Pathology & Immunology Baylor College of Medicine Houston, TX, US Director of Operations:Center for Drug Discovery Co-Director:Immunology Graduate Program
Research Interest
Dr. Sifers helped pioneer the initial mechanistic analysis of the biological systems that manage glycoprotein homeostasis (i.e., glycoproteostasis) in the mammalian secretory pathway. Using alpha1-antitrypsin deficiency as a medically relevant paradigm and client, his lab characterized the processes of chaperone-assisted glycoprotein folding as a means of conformation-based intracellular retention, and proposed and characterized the mannose timer hypothesis as an initial step in N-glycan-targeted proteolysis (quality control). Subsequently, his team identified the underlying contribution of the unfolded protein response (UPR), and elucidated how compromised quality control can function as an etiologic agent of infantile liver cirrhosis.