María Hernández Mustieles

Research interests

Although immunotherapies have transformed cancer treatment, only a minority of patients benefit in the long term. This is particularly evident in oesophageal cancer, where 5-year survival for many patients remains below 20%, partly due to limited ability to stratify patients and match them with the most effective therapies. Therefore, identifying new and more reliable biomarkers that can accurately predict therapeutic response is essential. My work focuses on studying patient-derived oesophageal and gastric cancer tissues as part of prospectively approved clinical trials, with the aim of identifying and validating biomarkers predictive of excellent patient outcomes with emerging therapies. I am currently training to culture live patient-derived tissue avatars and developing laboratory methods to characterise the tumour microenvironment. I also support projects related to blood-based early cancer detection and monitoring.

Background 

I completed a BSc in Biomedical Engineering at Tecnológico de Monterrey, Mexico, with a focus on brain-machine interfaces and biomaterials. During my undergraduate studies, I undertook a research internship in the Artzi Lab at Harvard Medical School, where I worked on the synthesis of nanocarriers for gene therapy and hydrogels for chemotherapy delivery. I recently completed an MSc in Applied Cancer Science at the University of Oxford, Department of Oncology. As a member of the Jiang Lab, I focused on mapping the subcellular localisation of Survivin across multiple cancer cell lines and establishing experimental protocols for its functional characterisation.