My research interest focuses on the crosstalk between signaling pathways and autophagy process to modulate cellular proliferation. During my doctoral studies, I examined the role of autophagy in stem and progenitor cell proliferation, where I established a non-cell-autonomous role of autophagy in coordinating cell-cycle progression and stem cell proliferation. Currently, as a NIH fellowship recipient, I explore the role of autophagy as one of potential mechanisms that require PI3K signaling during hematopoietic stem cell self-renewal, maintenance and differentiation with the ultimate goal to understand how modulation of autophagy can suppress pathological self-renewal and improve hematologic conditions such as myelodysplasia and leukemia in clinical settings.

Ames K. and Melendez A.(2017)."Non-autonomous autophagy in germline stem cell proliferation." Cell Cycle 16(16): 1481-1482.

Ames K., DaCunha DS., Gonzalez B., Konta M., Lin F., Shechter G., Starikov L., Wong S., Bülow HE., Meléndez A. â€œA non-cell-autonomous role of BEC-1/BECN1/Beclin1 in coordinating cell-cycle progression and stem cell proliferation during germline development.” Curr.Biol. 2017;27:905-13.

Lapierre L. R., Silvestrini M. J., NuñezL., Ames K., Wong S., Le T. T, Hansen M. and Meléndez A.(2013). "Autophagy genes are required for normal lipid levels in C. elegans." Autophagy 9(3): 278-286.

Hemmati S., Sinclair T., Tong M., Bartholdy B., Okabe R. O., Ames K., Ostrodka L., Haque T., Kaur I., Agarwal A., Zhao J.J., Roberts T.M., Gritsman K.,“PI3 kinase alpha and delta promote hematopoietic stem cell activation in response to stress”, JCI Insight, 2019, DOI: 10.1172/jci.insight.125832

Gurska L., Ames K., and Gritsman K. â€œSignaling Pathways in Leukemic Stem Cells”, book chapter, Adv Exp Med Biol, 2019, DOI: 10.1007/978-981-13-7342-8_1