Elsa R. Flores was named associate center director of basic science at Moffitt Cancer Center.
Flores will oversee the Basic Science Division, which includes the Cancer Physiology, Drug Discovery, Immunology, Molecular Oncology, and Tumor Biology departments. Flores will focus on faculty recruitment and continued investments in immunology, metabolism, and drug discovery, as well as new initiatives in bioengineering, RNA biology, aging, and epigenetics.
Flores will also have key roles in the submission of Moffitt’s Cancer Center Support Grant.
Prior to joining Moffitt in 2016, Flores served as the co-director of the Metastasis Research Center, co-leader of the Metastasis Research Program, and director of the Genes and Development Ph.D. program at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. She was also a professor of molecular and cellular oncology at MD Anderson.
Flores is chair of the Cancer Molecular Pathobiology study section at NIH, editor of Molecular Cancer Research, and a member of the editorial board of Cancer Research.
She has been awarded several research grants from NCI, including a research program project grant (P01) focused on identifying metabolic vulnerabilities in lung cancer, a postdoctoral training grant (T32) that provides integrative training to fellows in both cancer biology and data science, and an NCI Outstanding Investigator award (R35) to elucidate the biological functions of noncoding RNAs regulated by the p53 tumor suppressor family in metastasis.
