Matthew Freeman

Head of the Dunn School of Pathology

The main questions we study are what cellular mechanisms regulate signalling between animal cells, and how does that signalling control biological functions like physiology, development and pathology?

Our current focus recently is the rhomboid-like superfamily of proteins. We initially discovered that rhomboids were novel intramembrane proteases, conserved across evolution, which regulate the production of extracellular signals. The rhomboids are now known to be involved with many biological processes including, for example, growth factor activation, mitochondrial function, host cell invasion by parasites and bacterial physiology. Given this range of functions it is clear that rhomboids also have potential medical significance.