While in college, Ana Vazquez-Pagan lost her grandmother to Alzheimer's disease and lost a college friend to diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma (DIPG). These experiences inspired her to better understand medical mysteries.
Vazquez-Pagan earned her bachelor’s degree in biology in 2018 from Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts. She is interested in studying influenza pathogenesis.
Vazquez-Pagan currently works in the lab of Stacey Schultz-Cherry, PhD, Infectious Diseases. Her research topics include understanding influenza virus pathogenesis in the context of high-risk populations such as people with obesity and pregnant women. She hopes that her research informs innovative vaccine platforms.
"Through every step of my research career, I have been working to gain more knowledge and understanding of what is currently being done, what needs to be done in the future and how can I help further those goals,” she says. “I want to help prevent the hardships caused by disease in its many forms.”
Hometown: San Juan, Puerto Rico
Publications
Virani NA, Kelada OJ, Kunjachan S, Detappe A, Kwon J, Hayashi J, Vazquez-Pagan A, Biancur DE, Ireland T, Kumar R, Sridhar S, Makrigiorgos, GM, Berbeco RI. Noninvasive imaging of tumor hypoxia after nanoparticle-mediated tumor vascular disruption. PLoS One 5(7): e0236245, 2020. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0236245
Mueller R, Yasmin-Karim S, DeCosmo K, Vazquez-Pagan A, Sridhar S, Kozono D, Hesser J, Ngwa W. Increased carcinoembryonic antigen expression on the surface of lung cancer cells using gold nanoparticles during radiotherapy. Phys Med 76:236-242, 2020. doi:10.1016/j.ejmp.2020.06.024
Vazquez-Pagan, A., Honce, R., & Schultz-Cherry, S. Impact of influenza virus during pregnancy: from disease severity to vaccine efficacy. Future Virology ;15(7), 441-453, 2020. doi:10.2217/fvl-2020-0024
Henley RY, Vazquez-Pagan AG, Johnson M, Kanavarioti A, Wanunu M. Osmium-Based Pyrimidine Contrast Tags for Enhanced Nanopore-Based DNA Base Discrimination. PLoS ONE 10(12): e0142155, 2015.