Speaker Bio: Ana Ruiz Saenz, Ph.D.

Ana Ruiz-Saenz is originally from Spain and studied Biochemistry at the University Autonoma of Madrid, where she obtained a Ph.D in Molecular Biology in 2011. Her PhD work focused on the role of microtubule dynamics in cell migration. In 2013, in a movement towards translational research, she joined the laboratory of Dr. Moasser at UCSF as a postdoctoral fellow. During her postdoc, she studied the mechanisms driving cancer progression and resistance to therapies of HER2-amplified cancers. She found a novel mechanism to target the currently undruggable HER3 and investigated the potential of HER2 to overcome HER3 requirement in HER2-amplified breast cancers. She was awarded with an EMBO fellowship and a Ramon Areces postdoctoral grant. She will start her own lab in 2019 at the Erasmus Medical Center in The Netherlands aiming to provide deeper insights into the resistance mechanisms and the metastatic process of HER2-amplified cancers that will hopefully help to define more effective strategies for this disease.