Leonard Rome, PhD

Dr. Leonard Rome studies vaults, which are tiny containers found within human cells. Vaults are highly-conserved subcellular particles found in thousands of copies inside all higher eukaryotic cells. Vault numbers are often amplified in cancer cells that have acquired resistance to chemotherapy, a condition called multi-drug resistance, in which cancer cells are immune to the drugs trying to kill them. Rome and his colleagues, world leaders on vault research, are working to deplete vault content in cells to prevent drug resistance, which would be a major advance for cancer patients.

Buehler DC, Toso DB, Kickhoefer VA, Zhou ZH, Rome LH. Vaults engineered for hydrophobic drug delivery. Small. 2011 May 23;7(10):1432-9. Epub 2011 Apr 20

Han M, Kickhoefer VA, Nemerow GR, Rome LH. Targeted vault nanoparticles engineered with an endosomolytic peptide deliver biomolecules to the cytoplasm. ACS Nano. 2011 Aug 23;5(8):6128-37. Epub 2011 Jul 26

Kar UK, Srivastava MK, Andersson A, Baratelli F, Huang M, Kickhoefer VA, Dubinett SM, Rome LH, Sharma S. Novel CCL21-vault nanocapsule intratumoral delivery inhibits lung cancer growth. PLoS One. 2011 May 3;6(5):e18758.

Yang J, Kickhoefer VA, Ng BC, Gopal A, Bentolila LA, John S, Tolbert SH, Rome LH. Vaults are dynamically unconstrained cytoplasmic nanoparticles capable of half vault exchange. ACS Nano. 2010 Dec 28;4(12):7229-40. Epub 2010 Dec 1

Champion CI, Kickhoefer VA, Liu G, Moniz RJ, Freed AS, Bergmann LL, Vaccari D, Raval-Fernandes S, Chan AM, Rome LH, Kelly KA. A vault nanoparticle vaccine induces protective mucosal immunity. PLoS One. 2009 Apr 30;4(4):e5409.