Room 703 Walton Research Building

Phone: 843-792-8424

Education:

• B.S., 1993, Spelman College
• Ph.D., 1999, University of Alabama at Birmingham

Postdoctoral:

• 1999-2002, Postdoctoral Fellow, Vanderbilt University Medical Center
• 2002-2004, Senior Research Associate, University of Colorado Health Sciences Center
  

Research Interests:

My research interests are in the areas of cancer biology and DNA damage and repair. My work primarily focuses on the tumor suppressor BRCA2. Mutations in the BRCA2 gene are responsible for 30-40% of inherited, early-onset forms of breast cancer. Furthermore, C-terminal truncations of the BRCA2 protein prevent it from interacting with and regulating the DNA repair protein RAD51. Disruption of this interaction has been heavily implicated as one of the major causes of BRCA2-derived tumors. Therefore, the goals of this laboratory are to elucidate the more intricate details of the BRCA2-RAD51 interaction and further examine the effect of BRCA2 mutations on inefficient DNA repair and tumor formation.

Funding: Work in the laboratory is supported in part by grant K01 CA96944 from the National Cancer Institute.

Recent Publications:

Brown, Erika T., Robinson-Benion, Cheryl, and Jeffrey T. Holt, “Nuclear transport of RAD51 is important in evading Caspase-3 cleavage during DNA repair”, (submitted).

Brown, Erika T. and Gerald M. Fuller, “Sp1 Interacts with a Novel Complex on the Bb Fibrinogen Promoter”, (submitted).

Brown, Erika T. and Gerald M. Fuller, “Detection of a Protein Complex Associated with the G-455-A Polymorphism”, Blood, Vol. 92, No. 9, Nov. 1, 1998: pp. 3286-3293. (abstract)

Elhammer, Ake P., Poorman, Roger A., Brown, Erika, Maggiora, Linda L., Hoogerheide, John G., and Ferenc J. Kezdy, “The Specificity of UDP-GalNAc:Polypeptide N-Acetylgalactosaminyltransferase as Inferred from a Database of in Vivo Substrates and from the in Vitro Glycosylation of Proteins and Peptides”, The Journal of Biological Chemistry, Vol. 268, No. 14, May 15, 1993: pp. 10029-10038. (abstract)