Associate Professor
The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
I was born and raised in Caracas, Venezuela. I completed medical school at the Universidad Central de Venezuela, Caracas, Venezuela where I graduated in 1993. After finishing a year of intership, I moved to the US. In 1998, I joined the Pediatric Residency Program at Driscoll Children's Hospital, Corpus Christi, TX where I graduated in 2001. Subsequently, I moved to Houston where I completed my Peditric Hematology Oncology Fellowship at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in 2004. I then joined the Non-neural solid tumor fellowship program and completed it in 2005. From 2005-2009 I completed a post-doctoral fellowship and was promoted to Instructor and 6 months later to Assitant Professor. I am now an Associate Professor in the Department of Pediatrics Research at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. My lab focuses in pediatric sarcomas, in particular, osteosarcoma (OS). My main focus has been in understanding the biology of this tumor most specifically, the mechanisms involved in OS metastatic disease. OS significant intra-tumor and inter-tumor heterogeneity in addition to the limited sample availability has contributed to the difficulty in identifying driver genes. I have used a novel approach to deliver therapy directly to the lungs and demonstrated its effectiveness using various OS mouse models. I have demonstrated that aerosol Gemcitabine and L9-Nitrocamptothecin induce regression of OS lung metastases by a mechanism involving the Fas/Fas L pathway. I have also uncovered a potential biomarker to define chemotherapy-induced autophagy response (sensitivity vs resistance) in OS (pHSP27). I have expanded the use of the aerosol route to deliver gene and cytokine therapy (IL-2) that in combination with conventional chemotherapy or immune-therapy (NK cells) have shown benefit. Lastly, we study alternatives to enhance NK cell therapy efficacy against OS and novel imaging systems to track NK cells.