Maria Sanchez-Pino, Ph.D.
msanc2@lsuhsc.edu
Assistant Professor
Research: Immunomodulation by metabolic disorders and its impact on obesity-associated cancer.
Dr. Sanchez-Pino’s current scientific interest focuses on the cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying obesity-related inflammation and cancer to allow the development of new strategies for lowering cancer incidence and severity in patients with obesity.
More specifically, Dr. Sanchez-Pino’s lab aims to 1) identify the major obesity-associated factors that change the functional stages of myeloid cells, specifically subsets of neutrophils; 2) dissect the pathways driving inflammatory and immunosuppressive programs in myeloid cells under the synergistic influence of obesity and tumor microenvironments; and 3) elucidate transcriptional and epigenetic regulators of pro-tumorigenic functions of myeloid cells to discover therapeutic targets that restore anti-tumor immunity.
For this, in vitro approaches using mouse and human samples, and in vivo mouse models of diet-induced obesity (DIO) and cancer (breast and prostate) are performed in the lab.
Current lab member: Dr. Ramesh Thylur, Staff Scientist
Publications
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/myncbi/maria.sanchez-pino.1/bibliography/public/