Márquez-Magaña, Leticia - San Francisco State University

个人简介

In my role as the Director of the Health Equity Research (HER) Laboratory I lead research projects aimed on "Linking Basic Science to Community Health." This work is informed by my affiliation with the Health Equity Institute for Research, Practice and Policy at San Francisco State University (healthequity.sfsu.edu) since 2007. In these roles I work with other students and scientists at San Francisco State University (SF State), the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF), Children's Hospital Oakland Research Institute (CHORI), the Cancer Prevention Institute of California (CPIC), and the coordinating committee of the Region 6 Geographical Management of cancer health disparites Program (GMaP) to engage in the following research projects and activities.

研究领域

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Through a pilot grant from the Joint Venture Program of the CSU Program for Education and Research in Biotechnology we are working collaboratively with Dr. Elad Ziv at UCSF, and Dr. Steve Mack at CHORI to determine if a genetic link exists among women with triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC). TNBC are characterized by the absence of estrogen receptor, progesterone receptor, and HER-2 expression making them especially deadly because these are the targets for effective treatments of breast cancer. In the United States 15% of all breast cancers are TNBC and African American women have the highest incidence, while in sub-saharan Africa they comprise 82% of breast cancers. The high incidence of TNBC in African American and African women suggest a shared genetic ancestry for the disease. Thus we are determining genetic ancestry through mtDNA and HLA typing of DNA samples collected from Latinas with and without TNBC. Latinas are a heterogenous population group comprised of African, European, and Native American ancestries. We predict that Latinas with TNBC will share common mtDNA and/or HLA types indicative of African ancestry. Through a second pilot grant from the Center for Aging and Diverse Communities at UCSF we are collaborating with Dr. Scarlett Lin Gomez at CPIC to measure biomarkers for chronic stress in a multi-ethnic cohort of breast cancer survivors. This pilot grant is matched by funds from the Center for Vulnerable Populations at SFGH/UCSF to support postdoctoral fellow, Dr. Julio Ramirez, who leads the funded collaboration with Dr. Gomez. In prior work Dr. Gomez found that the multi-ethnic breast cancer survivors reported different levels of racism and systemic discrimination, as well as social support, that appeared to affect their breast cancer outcomes. Therefore, the goal of this pilot is to measure biomarkers for chronic stress in biospecimens collected from these women as a first step towards understanding how racism and discrimination, as well as social support, "gets under the skin" to affect breast cancer outcomes. In particular, we are developing biochemical and molecular tools to measure cortisol levels in hair, and telomere lengths in DNA extracted from saliva that are collected from the multi-ethnic breast cancer survivors. In a third collaborative project funded by the California Tobacco Related Disease Program we are working with Dr. Amanda Fallin at UCSF to conduct a student survey of tobacco related attitudes and perceptions at SF State. This work is part of a larger multi-center project to examine smoking policies and practices at 16 campuses in California. In addition to working collaboratively on the multi-center project, we are working with Dr. Fallin to write-up a case study on the events and actitivities that led to changes in the smoking policies at SF State that took place in the 2010-2011 academic year. These changes were sparked by a student-led project in my "Health Disparities in Cancer" class that was taught in spring 2009.