Date Posted
Speaker
Florencia McAllister, M.D.
Associate Professor,
Department of Clinical Cancer Prevention, and
Department of Gastrointestinal (GI) Medical Oncology,
Division of Cancer Medicine,
The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center,
Houston, TX
Dr. Florencia McAllister is an Associate Professor at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas. She is a physician-scientist trained at the University of Pittsburgh and Johns Hopkins University where she did postdoctoral fellowships in Host Defense Immunology, Medical Oncology and Clinical Pharmacology. She has expertise in basic and tumor immunology having made key discoveries on T cell immunobiology, including the characterization of the role of the IL-17 signaling pathway in host defense including innate immunity, in the initiation and progression of premalignant pancreatic and colorectal lesions.
Dr. McAllister joined MD Anderson Cancer Center as junior faculty in 2014 and has established a multidisciplinary translational program with clinical focus on gastrointestinal cancers. She has developed a Pancreatic Cancer High Risk Clinic in which patients with genetic predisposition for pancreatic cancer receive risk assessment and screening. She has built a Pancreatic Cancer High Risk Cohort that allows prospective collection of biospecimens and clinical information from these patients. Her laboratory focuses on dissecting the mechanisms for immunosurveillance failure that contributes to the initiation and progression of gastrointestinal cancer, while at the same time further advancing the understanding of the tumor microenvironment, including tumor bacteria and other immunosuppressive factors, which jointly contribute to the failure of most therapies used for pancreatic cancer treatment. Ultimately, she plans to translate novel findings from her laboratory into the clinic by focusing on targeting the immune system, primarily through cancer immunoprevention or immunotherapy.
Point of Contact
Mohammed, Altaf, Ph.D.
Program Officer, Contracting Officer Representative
Chemopreventive Agent Development
Email: altaf.mohammed@nih.gov