Warren Alpert Physician-Scientist MD/PhD and Advanced Training Program

Valeria Brown is an MD-PhD student from Byram, Mississippi and graduated summa
cum laude from Tougaloo College with a Bachelor’s degree in Biology and a minor in
Chemistry. Throughout her latter years of high school and undergraduate education,
she worked in the lab of Dr. Lianna Li to investigate the effects of Double Cortin-like
Kinase 1 (DCLK1) overexpression in cancer stem cells upon colorectal cancer
progression. She was also able to intern in Dr. Nita Maihle’s lab in the Cell and
Molecular Biology department of the University of Mississippi Medical Center (UMMC),
where she characterized the biomarker potential of epidermal growth factor receptor
isoform D (p110) in breast and ovarian cancer. Prior to the Summer of her junior year,
Valeria interned in Dr. Patrycja Dubielecka’s laboratory at the Rhode Island
Hospital/Alpert Medical School through the Leadership Alliance Summer Research
Program at Brown University, where she performed transcriptomic analysis of stromal
cell markers to better understand Acute Myeloid Leukemia. Presently, Valeria is
completing her rotation in Dr. Dubielecka’s lab and is interested in cancer stem cell
biology, hematological malignancies, epigenomics, and cancer evolution.