Dr. Michael Bassik's lab is an interdisciplinary lab focused on two major areas:

(1) They seek to understand mechanisms of cancer growth and drug resistance in order to find new therapeutic targets;

(2) They study mechanisms by which macrophages and other cells take up diverse materials by endocytosis and phagocytosis; these substrates range from bacteria, viruses, and cancer cells to drugs and protein toxins.

In each case, the processes the Bassik Lab studies represent both fascinating basic problems in cell biology and important therapeutic targets. A complementary interest is in the characterization of novel small molecule drugs and identification of synergistic drug interactions, with the aim of finding new treatments for diseases such as cancer and neurodegeneration.

To accomplish these goals, they develop and use new technologies for high-throughput functional genomics. These include ultra-complex CRISPR/Cas9 and RNAi-based libraries for genome-wide screens, systematic pairwise genetic interaction maps, and strategies for targeted mutagenesis. The lab combines these techniques with microscopy, biochemistry, cell biology, and bioinformatics, tailored to each problem. Together with collaborators, they use these tools to annotate the genome in health and disease states.