Dr. Carolina Sanabria

MD. MSc. PhD in Science - Cancer Research - Oncogeneticist

Colombia

I have work experience as a general physician in Colombia and in Chile. For the past 11 years, I have been interested in the field of biomedical cancer research. My approach has been to seek for biomarkers of genetic susceptibility and of prognosis in cancer to contribute to the understanding of carcinogenesis process, based on the molecular and genetics changes and their association with different outcomes in affected individuals, especially in admixed populations like Colombians. At the National Cancer Institute from Colombia (INC-E.S.E.), where I have been involved for the last 10 years, I have been actively implicated in the formulation and development of projects in breast, prostate and colorectal cancer as part of the Cancer Biology Research Group, using microarray and NSG technologies.

Along with my medical background I have academic training in different fields related to cancer, such as genetics, molecular, biochemistry and cancer risk assessments in hereditary cancer syndromes; and have also gained skills in bioinformatics and biostatistics for the analyses of large databases with bioinformatics tools such as Plink, Eigensoft, Admixture, ShapeIT, RFmix and R statistics.

Fort he past two years I have been leading the Hereditary Cancer Program at the INC-E.S.E. This Healthcare Program is for cancer patients fulfilling criteria for germline genetic testing for a suspected hereditary cancer syndrome. For developing this program we have standardized and validated a multigene panel, implemented the commercial software of SOPHIA Genetics for the analysis of genetic data, calling and the selection of the relevant genetic variants. All of the above including the pre and postest genetic counseling consultation and offering cascade testing in blood relatives. To date we have sequenced almost 600 patients and diagnosed a hereditary cancer syndrome in 21% of these.