Gennarina Riso

Class of 2014

Education: BS and MS in Biological Sciences at Cal Poly

 

Biography

Gennarina was interested in Stem Cell Research in part because she was astounded at the broad range of diseases that can be potentially treated and/or modeled using stem cells. This (relatively) new field provides nearly limitless opportunities to change approaches to medicine, and even research in general. She was most interested in stem cell research in the realm of cancer treatment and the ways in which stem cells can both model progression of cancer as well as be used to study potential novel cancer treatments. Once she completed this program, she was hoping to go to medical school and combine her knowledge of stem cells/developmental biology with her passion for physiology. She felt strongly that having a strong background in this field would only improve her ability to care for patients and think outside the box, regardless of what specialty she eventually would have.

She was working at the Sanford Consortium for Regenerative Medicine (UCSD) in the Jamieson Lab. Catriona Jamieson's primary area of focus is AML and CML; her department is the Moores Cancer Center. Because Dr. Jamieson is an MD PhD, all of the research in the lab has direct clinical relevance, they are able to use patient samples in experiments and try novel cancer drugs on cancer cells. Gennarina's specific project involved designing a lentiviral vector to deliver fluorescent proteins conjugated to specific cell cycle markers in order to study how various drugs affect cancer cell cycle kinetics both in vitro and in vivo.

After graduating, Gennarina was accepted into the Rocky Vista University College of Medicine to complete her DO.

Gennarina, presenting her Internship Research at the 2014 CIRM Trainee Meeting.