[Abstract] 

The nutrient signaling pathways are employed to regulate various signaling cascades that govern cellular energy metabolism and regulate cell growth, proliferation and survival. These pathways usually exert intracellular sensors that are capable of detecting the fluctuations in the abundancy of nutrients. Likewise, sensing and maintaining intracellular amino acid levels is certainly crucial biological phenomenon for survival, which ultimately affects the dynamic balance between catabolic and anabolic cellular pathways for efficient utilization of limited resources. Amino acids are the essential building blocks of many important components of life including proteins, hormones, neurotransmitters and other metabolites such as polyamines and creatine. However, amino acid utilizing processes such as protein synthesis are energetically expensive and consume massive amounts of amino acids and ATP.  In this seminar, I will introduce our recent findings about the amino acid signaling and metabolism in cancer and describe how we are approaching the targeting of amino acid signaling and metabolism for the control of human disease.