Name: Queralt Vallmajó Martín
Hometown: Girona, Catalunya, Spain
Hobbies: Traveling, meeting new people, good food & the beach
Lab: Wahl lab, Salk Institute for Biological Studies
Lab website: https://wahl.salk.edu/
What do you study?
I study the onset and progression of pancreatic cancer. For this, we have developed a bioengineering approach to culture cells in the lab mimicking the 3D shape, stiffness, and environment that they experience in their native tissues. These are called organoids. We receive patient pancreatic biopsies (small tissues that a doctor gets from suspected organs) and grow these cells in organoids. By doing this, we can study how these cells behave in a controlled environment, determine how fast they grow, which drug works best to kill them, and identify which treatment might be best for each patient, a term called personalized medicine.
Why is it important?
Pancreatic cancer is one of the most aggressive and deadly cancers. It is extremely difficult to detect it early, spreads quickly and often is resistant to treatments like chemotherapy. Discovery of new, effective treatments and valuable diagnostic tools to better combat this deadly disease necessitates new preclinical models, such as organoids, that closely recapitulate the pancreatic tumor.
What piqued your interest in science?
Since high school, inspired by a passionate biology teacher, I became obsessed with how everything in our body is linked together into near perfection. So, I decided to learn more and more, and slowly realized that I actually could spend my life devoted to understanding this perfection, and potentially learn ways to re-stabilize it after disease or injury.
What do you like about being a scientist?
I love the excitement of working on what is not yet known. We have so much freedom! You have an idea, great! Test it! And then explain it to everyone. And of course, ultimately translate all the little discoveries into practice and hopefully see them impact course of action in the clinics to help someone have a better life. What else can motivate you more to wake up every morning?
What are 5 general vocabulary terms someone should know going into your field of science?
Tumor antigens, microscopy, transcriptomics, cancer, metastasis
What are 5 specific vocabulary terms someone should know about your research?
Biomaterial, organoid, tissue engineering, stem cell, organotropic metastasis