Natalia Tretyakova, Ph.D.

Member, Center for Drug Design
Associate Professor, Department of Medicinal Chemistry

Contact Information 

Office: 760E CCRB Cancer Center
Phone: 612-626-3432
E-mail: trety001@umn.edu

Education

B.Sc., Moscow State University, Russia, 1988
M.S., Moscow State University, Russia, 1990
Ph.D., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1997
Postdoctoral, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1999

Research Interests:

Humans are exposed to complex mixtures of environmental and dietary carcinogens, as well as endogenous electrophiles produced from normal metabolism. Some of these chemicals and their metabolites are electrophilic species capable of chemical reactions with DNA. The resulting covalently modified DNA nucleobases (DNA adducts) have distorted base pairing characteristics and, if not repaired, can be converted to heritable mutations during DNA replication. Carcinogen-induced changes in critical genes that control cell growth and differentiation can lead to the initiation of cancer. Paradoxically, many common antitumor drugs use a similar mechanism by alkylating DNA in an attempt to induce tumor cell death. Long-term cancer survivors are at risk for secondary cancers resulting from exposure to antineoplastic agents. The focus of our research is to investigate the structural basis for promutagenic and anticancer activity of DNA-modifying agents. The primary experimental tool employed in our laboratory is biological mass spectrometry (ESI-MS, cap HPLC-MS, MS/MS, and MALDI-TOF MS), although most of the projects also involve organic synthesis, structural analyses (e.g. NMR, 2D NMR, CD spectroscopy), and molecular modeling of chemically altered DNA.

A detailed research description and publication list are also available.