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Educational Background
Medical/Graduate Education
Post-doctoral Fellowship(s)
Board Certification
Academic Interest(s)
Mouse Models of Ovarian Cancer
Dr. Dinulescu uses animal models to study proliferative lesions of the female genital tract and ovarian cancer. She has generated the first mouse model of endometriosis and endometrioid ovarian cancer while in the Tyler Jacks lab at MIT, and will continue to work in this system in her new position at BWH. Expression of oncogenic K-ras or inactivation of the Pten tumor suppressor in the ovarian surface epithelium gives rise to ovarian endometriosis-like lesions that are capable of inducing aggressive, metastasing, ovarian adenocarcinomas. Dr. Dinulescu is interested in further characterizing this model, which suggests that there may be genetic elements common to benign proliferative and malignant phases of ovarian carcinogenesis. She will be studying human instances of ovarian cancer to evaluate the extent of genetic mutational and expression similarity between the animal model and sporadic human disease. After the murine system is validated as an accurate model for human disease, it will be used to develop early diagnostic protein-based screening tools, and preclinical testing of tumor response to molecular targeted therapeutic agents.
Publication List and Abstracts (from PubMed/National Library of Medicine)
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