Daysha Ferrer Torres
University of Colorado Denver/Anschutz Medical Campus, CO·Medicine & Clinical Research·Early-career
Gastro-esophageal reflux disease (GERD), in which stomach acid and bile wash back into the esophagus, is about equally common in African Americans and European Americans. Yet African Americans develop less esophageal damage.
- Fields
Medicine & Clinical Research
Biology
Pharmacology
- Topics
esophagus
gastro-esophageal reflux disease
esophageal metaplasia
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Dec 2027
What they work on
- Compare molecular profiles and acid/bile injury responses of esophageal cells from African American and European American donors at the single-cell level, using primary tissue and stem cell-derived cultures.
- Test whether GSTT2, an enzyme that neutralizes reactive oxygen species and limits DNA damage, directly protects esophageal cells from bile and acid injury, by genetically raising or lowering its levels in stem cell models.
- Characterize injury responses in an ancestrally diverse esophageal organoid biobank with high-throughput, image-based screening, and run a drug screen for compounds that block bile/acid injury, such as compounds that stabilize GSTT2.
More about the research
They also have lower rates of metaplasia, a change in the lining's cell type, and of esophageal adenocarcinoma, a cancer that can follow. Genetic studies point to specific genes behind this difference, but few human esophagus models come from diverse ancestries, which makes the causes and possible treatments hard to study.
Why it matters
Long-term acid and bile reflux can lead to esophageal metaplasia and esophageal adenocarcinoma, and people differ in how vulnerable their esophagus is. Learning why esophageal cells from African Americans resist this injury, and whether the enzyme GSTT2 is responsible, could explain a racial difference in disease risk. The drug screen could identify compounds that protect the esophageal lining from reflux damage.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Sachin Wani
University of Colorado Denver/Anschutz Medical Campus, CO·Medicine & Clinical Research
Compare rates of progression to high-grade dysplasia or esophageal adenocarcinoma between surveillance endoscopy and endoscopic eradication therapy in a randomized trial of 530 patients with Barrett's esophagus and low-grade dysplasia.
Joshua Campbell
Boston University, MA·Genetics
Identify genetic alterations linked to tumor grade by whole exome sequencing of archived prostate cancers from 300 African American and 200 European American men from Boston Medical Center and UCSF.
Shailesh Singh
Morehouse School of Medicine, GA·Medicine & Clinical Research
Establish whether signaling between the CCR6 receptor and its chemokine partner CCL20 is associated with non-small cell lung cancer aggressiveness and therapeutic response in African American and European American patients.
The school
University of Colorado Denver/Anschutz Medical Campus: 41 labs on PI Pages, $766M a year on research, 205 research doctorates a year.
More about University of Colorado Denver/Anschutz Medical Campus
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