Surgical Oncologist & Colorectal Surgeon ; Program Director in Gastrointestinal and Other Cancers Research Group
National Cancer Institute / Division of Cancer Prevention . Walter Reed National Military Medical Center (WRNMC) Department of Surgery Bethesda, MD
ROCKVILLE, Maryland, United States
Dr. Luz Maria Rodríguez is a board-certified general surgeon and a dual fellowship-trained surgical oncologist
and colorectal surgeon who serves as a Program Director and Medical Officer in the Gastrointestinal and Other
Cancers Research Group in the NCI Division of Cancer Prevention. She is responsible for developing and
supporting ongoing early Phase 0-II prevention clinical trials through protocol development, scientific reviews,
and strategic planning. The program seeks to fill the research void between preclinical studies and Phase III trials
by emphasizing intervention effects on at-risk tissue-intensive collections and invasive biomarker monitoring. She
designs, oversees chemoprevention and treatment trials in organ sites such as the liver, pancreas, stomach,
and colon that use study agents such as vaccines, curcumin,metformin, erlotinib and aspirin. She is part of the Adjudication Cancer Committee of the ASPREE and the H pylori Network ( HpGP Network ).Prior to joining DCP, Dr. Rodríguez was a translational physician-scientist in the NCI Genetics Branch Her lab studied genome-wide gene expression profiles in colonic mucosa of populations at risk, an expression profiling approach that created a foundation for biomarkers of early colon cancer detection and prevention. She developed a Clinical Cancer Genetics Program devoted to risk surveillance, assessment, genetic testing, counseling, prevention and targeted intervention for individuals at increased risk for specific cancers. Moreover, her lab was the first to study the genetic profile comparison of Right vs. Left in Lynch Syndrome patients.
Dr. Rodríguez also is a senior staff/faculty surgeon at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences
(USUS) and Walter Reed Military Medical Center, for more than 23 years. She is an Advance Trauma Life Support (ATLS) and ACLS instructor. Dr. Rodríguez is trilingual Spanish, French and English and serves as an advisor on health disparities in the US, Latin America, and Africa.
Society of Black Academic Surgeons
Thursday, March 21, 2024
3:23pm – 3:28pm ET