Spotlight: Alysia Martinez Undergarduate Research
Written by Michelle Pujol:
Alysia Martinez is a senior majoring in Biology and on the Pre-Med Track. Part of the reason Alysia came to Baylor was because of the undergraduate research opportunities offered. She has always been curious of her surroundings and grew up looking at kids science magazines. She even asked her mom for a microscope. Her horizons opened further when she was able to do her own research through Google on her new iPad and rather than bombarding her mom with all of her questions. Her main focus was why diseases happen, why we don’t always have the answers, and how we can get these answers. She wanted more…to discover and uncover more. When she came to Baylor she thought she didn’t have what it took to be involved in research and look at her now! Alysia is an undergraduate research assistant in the Taube Lab here at Baylor. Studying epigenetics made her even more interested in pursuing research and with the help of a colleague she found out how she could join a lab.
This summer, Alysia worked at M.D Anderson in Houston’s Medical Center under Dr. George A. Calin. He is the scientist who connected microRNAs to cancer back in 2002. His career’s primary goal has been to characterize different microRNAs that are dysregulated in cancer. Alysia worked on characterizing a long-run coding RNA that one of the senior lab-mates had discovered and found that it is dysregulated in Leukemia. She ran proliferation assays, apoptosis assays, metabolism assays, etc. with her mentor. They wanted to find out its exact role in cancer. They conducted a CRISPR-Cas9 knockout until they found out what exactly it did and how they could tie it back to Leukemia.
Alysia is taking a research gap year before heading to medical school to pursue her MD/PhD. She wants to work in epigenetics, specifically with dysregulated non-coding RNAs in cancer. She is currently applying to labs nationally and internationally.
The thought of giving up research so early was one she could not stand. Her research was starting to take off and having it be on the backburner could not be an option. This is the reason she decided to pursue an MD/PhD–splitting her time between clinical and bench research.
Something that motivates Alysia is seeing actual patients and their families being impacted by cancer. Over the summer, she was shadowing a clinical breast oncologist when a woman with no prior breast cancer diagnosis came in asking for a double mastectomy. The doctor was very confused and she proceeded to tell them 5 out of 6 women in her family had died of breast cancer. Her screening had revealed her chances of developing cancer were lower and she was looking for an explanation. Alysia knew it was probably epigenetic, but we don’t yet understand epigenetic factors that relate to cancer. This made her realize it is up to our generation of scientists to understand the role of epigenetics in cancer in order to achieve earlier detection and treatment courses. Alysia can attest that seeing real patients with triple negative cancer and families torn apart from cancer diagnoses is not apparent from simply looking at a cell under a microscope.
In 10 years, Alysia sees herself going into residency or a postdoctoral position. She wants to be a resident who still does research. Alysia is such an inspiration to me and is actually one of the reasons I now love research. Working alongside her in the Taube Lab is an honor and I am excited to see what she achieves in the future.