Ms Catalina Vasquez, MSc.
Position:
- Director, Alberta Prostate Cancer Research Initiative, University of Alberta
Biography:
As the Program Director for the Alberta Prostate Cancer Research Initiative (APCaRI), Ms Vasquez is working to coordinate the translational goals of the team.
The APCaRI is comprised of multidisciplinary team of academic researchers, clinicians, nurses, and other personnel from universities, hospitals and biobanking centres across Alberta. With an overall goal improving outcomes and quality of life for those living with prostate cancer, the team is integrating its efforts to develop new diagnostic tests for prostate cancer, to discover novel biomarkers for aggressive prostate cancer, and to conduct clinical trials to establish the value of our new diagnostics in the clinic.
As a part of these efforts, Ms Vasquez will be coordinating the launch of a comprehensive biobank and database initiative called the Alberta Prostate Cancer Cohort. This ambitious prospective collection effort will serve as a validation cohort for diagnostic PCa tests under development by the team.
Prior to coming to Alberta, Ms Vasquez served as the Coordinator of the Lawson Translational Cancer Research Team and Project Manager for Investigator Initiated Trials with the Lawson Health Research Institute, London Health Sciences Centre and the Western University, where she also received her MSc in 2011.
During her Master’s Degree, the focus of her research was to identify new biomarkers that could differentiate indolent vs. aggressive prostate cancer and mediators of cancer cell migration.
Best publications:
- T. D. Palmer, C. H. Martínez, Vasquez, C, et al. Integrin-free tetraspanin CD151 can inhibit tumor cell motility upon clustering and is a clinical indicator of prostate cancer progression (in press Cancer Research)
- Catalina Vasquez; Michael Chang; Cornelia Toelg; et al. The export and organization of RHAMM into podosomes on the surface of mesenchymal cells (Submitted to PLOS ONE)
- Caitlin Ward, Catalina Vasquez, Eva Turley et al. Hyaluronan Associated Inflammation and Microenvironment Remodelling influences Breast Cancer Progression. Book chapter in Breast Cancer - Focusing Tumor Microenvironment, Stem cells and Metastasis, InTech December 14, 2011.
biobanking, diagnostic testing.
