Adjunct Senior Investigator, NIDCR
Senior Investigator, NCI
NIH/NIDCR
Building 37, Room 2050B
37 Convent Dr.
Bethesda, MD 20892-4256
United States
The two central questions that drive Dr. Weigert’s research are how membranes continuously change their shape and composition during trafficking events such as endocytosis and exocytosis at the plasma membrane, and how these processes are deregulated during tumor progression, invasion, and metastasis in head and neck squamous cell carcinomas. Specifically, Dr. Weigert and his team have directed their efforts toward understanding the spatiotemporal coordination of actin cytoskeleton, cell signaling, and cellular metabolism, which is essential in controlling membrane remodeling. To address these questions, Dr. Weigert and his colleagues have developed Intravital Subcellular Microscopy (ISMIC), which combines light microscopy techniques, such as two-photon and confocal microscopy, to enable the direct observation of the intracellular process in live animals. This has been complemented with the development of a series of pharmacological, molecular, and genetic tools that have made possible the investigation of cellular processes in vivo at a molecular level.
Dr. Roberto Weigert obtained a B.Sc. in chemistry from the University of Catania, Italy, after which he joined the department of cell biology at the Mario Negri Institute. In 2000, Dr. Weigert received a Ph.D. from the Open University of London. In 2001, Dr. Weigert joined the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) at NIH as a research fellow in the Laboratory of Cell Biology. In 2006, Dr. Weigert joined NIDCR as chief of the Intracellular Membrane Trafficking Unit. In 2015, Dr. Weigert joined the Laboratory of Cellular and Molecular Biology at the National Cancer Institute (NCI).
- Milberg O, Shitara A, Ebrahim S, Masedunskas A, Tora M, Tran DT, Chen Y, Conti MA, Adelstein RS, Ten Hagen KG, Weigert R. Concerted Actions of Distinct Non-Muscle Myosin II Isoforms Drive Intracellular Membrane Remodeling in Live Animals. J Cell Biol. 2017 Jul;3216(7):1925-1936.
- Masedunskas A, Chen Y, Stussman R, Weigert R, Mather IH. Kinetics of milk lipid droplet transport, growth, and secretion revealed by intravital imaging: lipid droplet release is intermittently stimulated by oxytocin. Mol Biol Cell. 2017 Apr 1;28(7):935-946.
- Porat-Shliom N, Tietgens AJ, Van Itallie CM, Vitale-Cross L, Jarnik M, Harding OJ, Anderson JM, Gutkind JS, Weigert R, Arias IM. Liver kinase B1 regulates hepatocellular tight junction distribution and function in vivo. Hepatology. 2016 Oct;64(4):1317-29.
- Motley MP, Madsen DH, Jürgensen HJ, Spencer DE, Szabo R, Holmbeck K, Flick MJ, Lawrence DA, Castellino FJ, Weigert R, Bugge TH. A CCR2 macrophage endocytic pathway mediates extravascular fibrin clearance in vivo. Blood. 2016 Mar 3;127(9):1085-96.
- Tran DT, Masedunskas A, Weigert R, Ten-Hagen KG. Arp2/3-mediated F-Actin branching controls regulated exocytosis in vivo. Nat Commun. 2015 Dec 7;6:10098.