Maria de la Luz Garcia-Hernandez, Ph.D.
Maria de la Luz Garcia-Hernandez earned her bachelor degree in Chemistry and Pharmacobiology (1993) from the Autonomous University of Puebla, Mexico. Then, she moved to the Center of Research and Advanced Studies (National Polytechnic Institute, Mexico) to study the role of c-myc in the transcriptional regulation of the early promoter of human papillomavirus, getting her MD in 1997. She received her Ph. D in Molecular Biomedicine, after analyzing the role of IL-10 in an experimental model of melanoma at the Center of Research and Advanced Studies (National Polytechnic Institute, Mexico) in 2002. In the same year, Dr. Garcia-Hernandez moved to the laboratory of Dr. Martin W Kast (Bernardin Cancer Center at Loyola Univesrity, Chicago, IL. USA). There, she was working with vaccination strategies, based on recombinant DNA, to treat mice with prostate cancer. In Dr. Kast's lab, she was able to find successful vaccination strategies that induced highly specific and protective immune responses against prostate cancer. Although the vaccines were based on DNA from self-prostate antigens, Dr. Garcia-Hernandez and Dr. Kast were able to eradicate prostate tumors without inducing autoimmunity. In 2006, Dr. Garcia-Hernandez moved to the lab of Dr. Richard W Dutton (Trudeau Institute, Saranac Lake, NY. USA), where she was actively studying the role of TC17 cells in the control of melanoma tumors and their protective role after transfer to mice infected with Influenza virus. In 2009, she moved to the James P Wilmot Cancer Center to investigate whether inducible bronchus associated lymphoid tissue can have a positive or negative impact on lung tumors. She will also be focusing her efforts to elucidate the participation of CD40 and CD40L in tumor immunity.
