Dr. Tracy Keller received her BS in nuclear engineering from Kansas State University, her MS in cancer biology from the Harvard School of Public Health, and her PhD in cell and developmental biology from Harvard University. Her interest in metastatic signaling and the phosphatidylinositol-3-kinase signal transduction pathway led her to work in Tom Roberts Lab, where during her thesis work she designed a cutting edge polymerase chain reaction-based diagnostic assay for the diagnosis of CNS Lyme disease. Dr. Keller’s work with Dr. Whitman broadly has focused on the development of research projects to study stromal inflammatory signaling and to discover novel signal transduction pathways that participate in chronic inflammatory disease, tumor metastasis, and metabolic disease. This work has established the cellular target and molecular mechanism of action of the small molecule Halofuginone.

Dr. Keller’s interests include an improved understanding novel aspects of the amino acid restriction (AAR) pathway, including both novel molecular signaling functions of this pathway and the AAR’s role as a modulator of cellular and tissue inflammatory status. She is interested in understanding the potential therapeutic role of hormetic stress signals on chronic inflammatory disease, metabolic disease, and aging at the cellular and organismal level. Current areas of interest include understanding AAR pathway activation as a means of suppressing inflammatory driven tissue remodeling, and the development of this knowledge for therapeutic application to fibrosis, arthritis, chronic inflammatory disease and metabolic disease.