John T. Cunningham
Cancer biologist who showed in Puigserver's lab at Dana-Farber that mTOR controls mitochondrial activity, later worked on protein synthesis and nucleotide metabolism in cancer in Davide Ruggero's lab at UCSF, and now works at the University of Cincinnati
Department of Cancer Biology, University of Cincinnati (PubMed affiliation, 2026) · Department of Urology and Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center, UCSF (Davide Ruggero lab, papers 2014–2016) · Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Department of Cell Biology, Harvard Medical School (Puigserver lab, 2007)
mTOR is best known for switching on protein production when nutrients are plentiful. In the Atlas study CUN2007, Cunningham and colleagues in Puigserver's lab showed that mTORC1 also runs the cell's power plants, the mitochondria. Working in cultured cells and mouse muscle, they found that mTORC1 helps two proteins, the transcription factor YY1 and its partner PGC-1alpha, switch on genes for mitochondrial function. Blocking mTOR with rapamycin lowered these genes and cut the cells' oxygen use. The paper explains part of why mTOR inhibitors change metabolism, and why long-term rapamycin can affect energy use in tissues.
Cunningham then moved to Davide Ruggero's lab at the University of California, San Francisco. A 2014 first-author paper in Cell showed that the cancer gene Myc couples protein synthesis and nucleotide production through a single enzyme, PRPS2, whose own production is controlled at the translation step. In 2016 Cunningham was a co-author on a method to measure mTORC1 activity in living animals by PET scanning with radioactively labelled transferrin.
A 2026 paper lists Cunningham at the Department of Cancer Biology, University of Cincinnati, on work showing that the enzyme caspase-1 acts as a scaffold that binds raptor, a part of mTORC1, to hold back excess inflammatory NF-kB signalling in leukemia cells. The same mTOR focus and the earlier Ruggero connection tie this record to the same person.
Milestones in the Atlas
A selection, not a full bibliography: only papers that meet the Atlas inclusion criteria.
| Year | Evidence | Study |
|---|---|---|
| 2007 | M | mTOR controls mitochondrial oxidative function through a YY1-PGC-1alpha transcriptional complex CUN2007 First author: showed that mTORC1 drives mitochondrial gene expression and oxygen use through a YY1-PGC-1alpha complex, and that rapamycin lowers both. |
Co-authors in the Atlas 2
People with a profile here who share at least one study with John T. Cunningham.
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- Pere Puigserver Metabolism researcher who studies how mitochondrial energy production and nutrient metabolism are controlled, including the finding that mTOR drives mitochondrial gene activity through YY1 and PGC-1alpha.
- Vamsi K. Mootha Studies how mitochondria are built and work and how their genes cause disease, including the MitoCarta inventory of the mitochondrial proteome and the mitochondrial calcium uniporter.
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