Elizaveta Freinkman
Chemist and mass-spectrometry specialist at the Whitehead Institute who measured metabolites for many studies of nutrient sensing and cancer metabolism, including the lysosome amino acid work behind two Atlas papers
Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research (papers 2014–2022, affiliation at the time of the studies) · current position not confirmed
Portrait: The Hope Funds for Cancer Research
Some of the key questions about mTORC1, the growth-control complex, are questions of chemistry: which small molecules are inside a compartment, and how fast they move. Elizaveta Freinkman is a co-author on two Atlas papers from David Sabatini's lab that answered such questions for the lysosome, the cell's recycling sac and the platform where mTORC1 is switched on.
WYA2017 showed that SLC38A9, a transporter in the lysosome membrane that was already known to signal arginine to mTORC1, also pumps essential amino acids such as leucine out of the lysosome. Cells need this to use proteins taken up from outside as food. ABU2017 pulled lysosomes out of human cells within minutes and measured their contents by mass spectrometry. Blocking mTOR strongly reduced the release of most essential amino acids from the lysosome, so mTORC1 also controls what leaves the lysosome. Both studies were done in cultured cells; ABU2017 used one human cell line and short drug treatments.
Freinkman's name appears on more than forty papers in PubMed, most of them from groups in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where metabolite measurements were needed. Examples include a 2014 Cell paper with the Weinberg and Sabatini labs showing that cancer cells need dihydropyrimidines to switch to an invasive state, and a 2022 Cancer Research paper with Matthew Vander Heiden's lab on the enzyme PKM1 in prostate cancer, where PubMed still lists her at the Whitehead Institute. A current position could not be confirmed from an official source.
Milestones in the Atlas
A selection, not a full bibliography: only papers that meet the Atlas inclusion criteria.
| Year | Evidence | Study |
|---|---|---|
| 2017 | M | mTORC1 Activator SLC38A9 Is Required to Efflux Essential Amino Acids from Lysosomes and Use Protein as a Nutrient WYA2017 Co-author on the cell study showing that the lysosomal transporter SLC38A9 releases essential amino acids such as leucine from lysosomes. |
| 2017 | M | Lysosomal metabolomics reveals V-ATPase- and mTOR-dependent regulation of amino acid efflux from lysosomes ABU2017 Co-author on the lysosomal metabolomics study showing that mTOR controls the release of essential amino acids from lysosomes. |
Co-authors in the Atlas 8
People with a profile here who share at least one study with Elizaveta Freinkman.
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- Monther Abu-Remaileh 2 shared studies Worked out how to isolate lysosomes fast enough to measure what is inside them, and found that mTOR controls what gets out
- David M. Sabatini Identified mTOR (as RAFT1) in 1994. His lab then mapped much of the machinery around it: raptor and rictor at the core of mTORC1 and mTORC2, the Rag–Ragulator system that docks mTORC1 on the lysosome, and the sensors that detect leucine, arginine and SAM
- Gregory A. Wyant Showed that the lysosomal protein SLC38A9 exports leucine and other essential amino acids out of the lysosome, letting cells grow on proteins they have taken up and broken down there
- Choah Kim Researcher in David Sabatini's lab at the Whitehead Institute who contributed to three studies on how amino acids at the lysosome are sensed by mTORC1
- Nouf N. Laqtom Cell biologist who helped develop methods to purify intact lysosomes and used them to find what the Batten disease gene CLN3 does, and who now runs a lab at KAUST on lysosome and endoplasmic reticulum defects in rare brain and metabolic diseases
- Rachel L. Wolfson Identified Sestrin2 as the direct leucine sensor of the mTORC1 pathway as a Sabatini-lab MD-PhD student. She also co-discovered KICSTOR, the complex that recruits GATOR1 to the lysosome
- Sze Ham Chan Researcher at the Whitehead Institute who contributed to studies of lysosome contents, nutrient sensing and cancer metabolism, mostly from David Sabatini's lab
- Walter W. Chen Co-author of the 2017 Cell paper showing that SLC38A9 releases essential amino acids from lysosomes to switch on mTORC1
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