Awarded in 2013
Home Department: Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine
Faculty Advisors: Michael Clarke (Medicine) and Stephen Quake (Bioengineering and Applied Physics)

Research Title: A stem-cell based approach to finding small molecule therapeutic interventions for Alzheimer’s

Research Description: Some of the most important differences between normal stem cells and cancerous stem cells are the epigenetic marks that mark which genes become activated or repressed during a cell's development. These include histone modifications and transcription factor binding events. To study these differences, Liz hopes to combine methods in stem cell biology, bioengineering, and bioinformatics in order to develop and use a small cell-number method specifically in the pancreas and brain. This will allow her to see which biological pathways are upregulated or downregulated and hopefully identify potential druggable targets for cancer therapies. 

WHERE IS SHE NOW?

Elizabeth is a research investigator at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, doing computational biology work, analyzing different drug responses of patient derived xenograft models, and also create data visualizations so biologists can analyze their own data (sequencing, protein, and clinical data).