N. Valerio Dorrello
Pediatric critical care physician-scientist at Columbia University whose training in Michele Pagano's lab at NYU showed how S6K1 removes the translation brake PDCD4, and who now works on repairing injured children's lungs
Division of Pediatric Critical Care Medicine and Hospital Medicine, Department of Pediatrics, Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons · Department of Pathology, NYU Cancer Institute, New York University School of Medicine (Pagano lab, 2003–2008)
To grow, a cell must make proteins, and to make proteins it must unwind the folded start of each messenger RNA. The helicase eIF4A does this, and the tumour suppressor PDCD4 holds eIF4A back. In 2006, in a Science paper with Michele Pagano as senior author, N. Valerio Dorrello showed how growth signals lift this brake. S6K1, a kinase switched on by mTORC1, phosphorylates PDCD4, which marks it for the ubiquitin ligase betaTRCP; PDCD4 is then destroyed, eIF4A is freed and translation and cell growth go up.
The paper added a new branch to the map of what mTORC1 does: besides acting on ribosomal protein S6 and on 4E-BP1, the pathway also removes an inhibitor of the translation machinery. Because PDCD4 is a tumour suppressor, its loss through this route also links mTOR signalling to cancer growth.
Dorrello's PubMed record has papers with the Pagano group at NYU from 2003 to 2008, then a later line of work at Columbia University. The later papers come from the Department of Pediatrics and its Division of Pediatric Critical Care Medicine, often with bioengineers, for example a 2017 study with Gordana Vunjak-Novakovic on delivering and imaging stem cells in the lung. As senior author of a 2026 npj Regenerative Medicine paper, Dorrello showed that healthy alveolar type II cells, the cells that make surfactant, can be engrafted into mice lacking surfactant protein C and reduce lung injury, a step toward cell therapy for childhood interstitial lung disease.
Milestones in the Atlas
A selection, not a full bibliography: only papers that meet the Atlas inclusion criteria.
| Year | Evidence | Study |
|---|---|---|
| 2006 | M | S6K1- and betaTRCP-mediated degradation of PDCD4 promotes protein translation and cell growth DOR2006 First author: showed that S6K1 triggers betaTRCP-mediated degradation of PDCD4, releasing the translation helicase eIF4A and promoting protein synthesis and cell growth. |
Co-authors in the Atlas 1
People with a profile here who share at least one study with N. Valerio Dorrello.
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- Michele Pagano Studies ubiquitin ligases, the enzymes that tag proteins for destruction, including how the S6K1 kinase triggers degradation of the translation brake PDCD4.
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