The Subcellular Drug Transport Laboratory

Welcome to the Blog of Gus Rosania, from THE SUBCELLULAR DRUG TRANSPORT LABORATORY (click here to visit our lab website) of the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of Michigan College of Pharmacy.

Our Research Group studies the microscopic transport properties of small drug-like molecules inside cells. As an overarching hypothesis, we propose that a drug's microscopic distribution within cellular organelles is a major determinant of drug efficacy and toxicity, as important as its macroscopic distribution in the organs of the body. Experimentally, we use high throughput microscopic imaging instruments to capture the local distribution and dynamics of small molecules inside cells. For image data analysis, we are developing innovative computational tools and statistical strategies, combining cheminformatics and machine vision to relate the chemical structure of small molecules of varying chemical structures to their subcellular distribution. We are also developing biochemical analysis methods to study the microdistribution and cellular pharmacokinetics of small drug-like molecules. Lastly, with the information gained through experiments, we build mathematical models that are used to simulate drug transport and distribution in single cells and higher order cellular organizations, based on biophysical principles governing molecular transport phenomena at the cellular level.