Ivan Robert Nabi, PhD

Professor, Life Sciences Institute
University of British Columbia Faculty of Medicine, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

Dr. Nabi is a Director of Imaging Facility in the Life Sciences Institute of the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. He obtained his Ph.D. in cancer metastasis from the Weizmann Institute of Science in 1989 and has researched cancer cell biology for more than 30 years, publishing 131 papers. He identified the Gp78 E3 ubiquitin ligase and most recently defined its role as a regulator of ER-mitochondria contacts, mitophagy, and mitochondrial production of reactive oxygen species in cancer cells. In addition, his work is focused on the characterization of cell surface domains, including lipid rafts, caveolae, and non-caveolar caveolin-1 scaffolds, and the galectin lattice and their role in the regulation of focal adhesion dynamics and tension in breast and prostate cancer cell migration and metastasis. Recent work from Dr. Nabi’s laboratory has pioneered the application of computational machine learning to super-resolution microscopy to decipher the molecular architecture and interactions of subcellular structures, thereby defining their roles in cancer progression. He is very excited to promote research on breast cancer, which, despite tremendous advances, remains an under-addressed and devastating cancer type impacting young lives.