Research Interests

The Rimm Laboratory spans a range of topics in 3 main areas including:

1.) Basic issues; including regulation of growth factor mediated cell signaling and metastasis.

2.) Translation issues; including tissue biomarkers, circulating cancer cells, tissue microarrays and digital pathology.

3.) Clinical issues: including advanced objective diagnostics using novel information gathering technologies.

Studies include:

1.) Translational studies using tissue microarray technology and digital pathology algorithms (AQUA) to apply basic, rigorous molecular technology to diagnostic problems in pathology and cytopathology toward the goal of development of new predictive and prognostic tissue biomarkers. The AQUA technology and its application is better illustrated at the Yale Pathology Tissue Services website for the TMA facility. The AQUA technology has also been commercialized by HistoRx in New Haven, CT. More information about the commercialized version see www.historx.com.

2.) Studies of the organization and regulation of the biochemical interactions occurring at the cytoplasmic face of the cadherin-based adhesion complex and Growth Factor Receptor complexes (focusing on Met and ErbB family) involving signal transduction and the cytoskeleton.

3.) Analysis of micro-metastasis and circulating cancer cells in the peripheral blood for both diagnostic and prognostic applications.

4.) Use of spectral analysis for tumor diagnosis and classification in surgical pathology and cytopathology.