Maria T. Diaz-Meco
Maria T. Diaz-Meco studies the molecular and cellular mechanisms that control therapy resistance, with a particular interest in the regulation of lineage plasticity in prostate cancer. Her current approach is to identify metabolic and epigenetic vulnerabilities that will serve as therapeutic targets for new anti-cancer medicines that selectively impact tumor cell growth and survival. Diaz-Meco recently identified the metabolic pathways underlying the acquisition of therapy-resistance in patients of the most aggressive form of metastatic prostate cancer. These studies unraveled potential targets in the control of the metabolic and epigenetic programs whose therapeutic manipulation could restore sensitivity to androgen-deprivation therapy to patients that have become refractory to this type of treatment. Maria is also interested in the metabolic impact of stromal reprogramming and the crosstalk of the tumor cell and its microenvironment during tumor initiation and progression in prostate cancer. The overall goal of her projects is to study metabolism and inflammation in prostate cancer, understand this disease's biology, and identify potentially novel therapeutic targets.
Maria T. Diaz-Meco earned a bachelor’s degree in Chemistry and her Ph.D. in Biochemistry & Molecular Biology at the University Complutense in Madrid, Spain, with graduate training studies at the National Cancer Institute. She was an Associate Professor in the National Research Council of Spain when she was recruited in 2006 to the Genome Research Institute at the University of Cincinnati. In 2010, she was appointed Professor of Cancer and Cell Biology at the University of Cincinnati Medical College, and in 2011 she joined the Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute as Professor in the Cancer Metabolism and Signaling Networks Program. In 2020, she was recruited to Weill Cornell Medicine as Professor in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine. Since January 2021, she is a Homer T. Hirst III Professor of Oncology in Pathology at WCM.