Lab Team

I am in the Neuroscience program at Weill Cornell. Currently, I am using mouse models to understand the regulation of intraocular pressure. In addition, I have studied other potential therapeutic roles of sAC and cAMP within sperm.

In my time in the LevBuck lab, I have assisted post-docs in their research on sperm motility and contributed to the efforts of the male contraceptive initiative. Currently, I am working on the phenotypic characterizations of the ADCY10 C2 KO mouse model. 

I am responsible for two projects: 1) I study the crosstalk between sperm metabolism and signaling pathways underlying sperm fertilization to understand how sperm adjust their metabolism to an increased energy demand during fertilization; 2) I work on a non-hormonal, reversible contraceptive for males and/or females using a pharmacological inhibitor of soluble adenylyl cyclase. Within these projects I developed and applied new metabolic profiling and tracing methodologies to germ cells shedding light on the metabolic needs of mouse and human sperm for fertilization and I provided the in vivo proof-of-concept for a first-of-its-kind on-demand male contraceptive. For this project I was awarded a fellowship from the Male Contraceptive Initiative.

My project is to purify and elucidate the function of an endogenous inhibitor to soluble adenylyl cyclase (sAC). As a potential small molecule, this endogenous inhibitor is present in cell lysate and is capable of fully inhibiting sAC activity. My long-term goals are to combine the mechanism-based drug knowledge I gained in Pharmacy School with the research expertise I will gain in Grad School to developing new & more effective drugs that produce fewer side effects.

My main research goal is to use a mouse model to study the localization and distribution of soluble adenylyl cyclase (sAC) in sperm cells and somatic tissues as well as understanding isoform diversity and possible binding partners of this protein. 

In addition, I'm working in studying the safety and toxicity of sAC inhibitors and assisting in testing such inhibitors in mammalian animal models. For this project, I was awarded a fellowship from the Male Contraceptive Initiative (MCI). 

My overall research goal in the lab is to discover and characterize pharmacological and novel endogenous activators of soluble adenylyl cyclase (sAC). In pursuit of this goal, I am currently using a high-throughput screening method designed to identify small-molecule activators of sAC.