Dr. Dawsons major research interest is in the biochemistry of sphingolipids. The relevance of this work extends to both brain diseases and cancer. These cell membrane components form microdomains at the cell surface (Rafts) which regulate different types of cell signaling pathways. Since tyrosine kinases and Akt kinase are associated with rafts, this is especially relevant for diabetes research. Dr. Dawson is mainly interested in the role of one of these sphingolipids, ceramide in death signaling pathways through the Akt kinase, since ceramide acts as a phospho-Akt phosphatase. Dr. Dawson is interested both in the regulation of ceramide synthesis and its formation from sphingomyelin by action of different sphingomyelinases controlled by such death pathway components as caspase 8. In the inherited neurodegenerative disease, infantile Batten disease, a deficiency of palmitoyl:protein thioesterase (PPT1) leads to premature death of neurons through inactivation of Akt. If Dr. Dawson and her lab overexpress PPT1, they protect the cell against apoptosis by activating Akt and we have observed this to occur naturally in many human cancers. They therefore have a very active program of making synthetic inhibitors of PPT1 which will serve as anti-cancer drugs. Dr. Dawsons long-term goal is to develop drugs which will ameliorate the effects of ceramide in both inherited diseases such as Batten disease as well as autoimmune diseases such as multiple scleosis and diabetes.