UCLA student Mildred Galvez earns award to attend major cancer meeting

Congratulations to Mildred Galvez, an MD/PhD student in the Department of Molecular and Medical Pharmacology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. She received one of the Minority Scholar in Cancer Research Awards at the American Association for Cancer Research’s annual meeting, held April 8 to 13 in New Orleans. 

The award paid for Galvez to attend the conference and present a poster detailing her work in the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center’s exhibition hall. Galvez’s project is titled “Mutations in transcriptional activators of MHC I antigen presentation, NLRC5 and CIITA, are mutually exclusive and have different effects on melanoma gene transcripts.” 

“Response to many immunotherapies depends on effective recognition and eradication of tumor cells by the immune system,” the abstract states. “This is mediated by the successful presentation of tumor-specific antigens on major histocompatibility complex class I (MHC I) molecules on the surface of tumor cells. Studies have focused on alterations in MHC I complex proteins (e.g. HLA, B2M) and gene regulatory elements (e.g. NLRC5). However, the impact on tumor response of individual defects in components regulating and composing the MHC I antigen processing and presentation machinery (APM) have not been extensively studied.”

Galvez works in the lab of Dr. Antoni Ribas, a professor of medicine, surgery, molecular and medical pharmacology at the Broad Stem Cell Research Center and director of the Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center’s Tumor Immunology Program. He’s also a past president of AACR. Ribas contributed to Galvez’s research, as did Katie M. Campbell and Egmidio Medina.

Original Article: "UCLA student Mildred Galvez earns award to attend major cancer meeting"