Catera Wilder, PhD

Assistant Professor
Bioengineering
+1 415 476-6452

Catera Wilder, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences at the University of California San Francisco and Chan Zuckerberg Biohub Investigator. She received her Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University (2016) under the direction of Manu Platt. As a UCLA Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow in the lab of Alexander Hoffmann (2016-2022) she focused on understanding innate immune and inflammatory responses by studying ISGF3 transcription factor dynamic regulation using a systems biology approach. Her work investigating the interferon signaling and transcriptional regulation has uncovered stimulus specific responses determined by coordinated stimulus-contingent positive feedback loops.

Dr. Wilder devoted much of her training in complementary research areas to develop her own distinctive research program. As a graduate student, her studies showed that perturbations within a proteolytic network using protease inhibitors can upregulate matrix degradation in a cellular localization dependent manner, potentially leading to increased cancer cell invasion or metastasis. She published most of this work in The International Journal of Biochemistry & Cell Biology. During her training, she was awarded the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship and Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship. Due to collaborations on other projects, she was also a co-author on five other peer reviewed journal articles.

Her passion to understand the complexity of cellular responses led her to study cellular signaling networks in innate immunity as a postdoctoral fellow. From these studies, she demonstrated distinct regulation of antiviral and inflammatory gene expression programs by different interferon cytokines control of feedback and feedforward loops. One manuscript for this work is currently in preparation and another published in Frontiers in Immunology. She was the recipient of the UCLA Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellowship award and two NIH T32 Postdoctoral Fellowship awards.

Publications: 

Four guiding principles for effective trainee-led STEM community engagement through high school outreach.

PLoS computational biology

Luecke S, Schiffman A, Singh A, Huang H, Shannon B, Wilder CL

A stimulus-contingent positive feedback loop enables IFN-β dose-dependent activation of pro-inflammatory genes.

Molecular systems biology

Wilder CL, Lefaudeux D, Mathenge R, Kishimoto K, Zuniga Munoz A, Nguyen MA, Meyer AS, Cheng QJ, Hoffmann A

High Dose IFN-β Activates GAF to Enhance Expression of ISGF3 Target Genes in MLE12 Epithelial Cells.

Frontiers in immunology

Kishimoto K, Wilder CL, Buchanan J, Nguyen M, Okeke C, Hoffmann A, Cheng QJ

Dynamic Model of Protease State and Inhibitor Trafficking to Predict Protease Activity in Breast Cancer Cells.

Cellular and molecular bioengineering

Shockey WA, Kieslich CA, Wilder CL, Watson V, Platt MO

Differential cathepsin responses to inhibitor-induced feedback: E-64 and cystatin C elevate active cathepsin S and suppress active cathepsin L in breast cancer cells.

The international journal of biochemistry & cell biology

Wilder CL, Walton C, Watson V, Stewart FAA, Johnson J, Peyton SR, Payne CK, Odero-Marah V, Platt MO

Cathepsin Protease Inhibition Reduces Endometriosis Lesion Establishment.

Reproductive sciences (Thousand Oaks, Calif.)

Porter KM, Wieser FA, Wilder CL, Sidell N, Platt MO

Muscadine grape skin extract can antagonize Snail-cathepsin L-mediated invasion, migration and osteoclastogenesis in prostate and breast cancer cells.

Carcinogenesis

Burton LJ, Smith BA, Smith BN, Loyd Q, Nagappan P, McKeithen D, Wilder CL, Platt MO, Hudson T, Odero-Marah VA

Detection of femtomole quantities of mature cathepsin K with zymography.

Analytical biochemistry

Li WA, Barry ZT, Cohen JD, Wilder CL, Deeds RJ, Keegan PM, Platt MO

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