We are pleased to introduce our community expert, Dr. Carly Bess Williams. Read on to learn more about her efforts in the MBC community:
“Growing up in a rural county in South Georgia, many students never made it to high school graduation, much less exposed to cutting-edge science or research. I took advantage of the few advanced level science courses offered at my high school, but my passion for cancer research developed during my undergraduate degree at Georgia College & State University. During this time my aunt had been battling metastatic cancer, and she lost her battle during the second year of my undergraduate. Watching her battle this disease, and interacting with the medical professionals on her team sparked my interest in a career in cancer.
At this point in my undergraduate, I was a pre-med biology major with the aspirations to be a medical oncologist. However, one class shifted the course of my entire career path, and that was cancer biology. During this course, we learned how cancer research had evolved over the years and we read research and review articles of important findings in the field. However, it was the mysteries of cancer and the unknowns that blew my mind – how could cancer have been around for so long, but we were only scratching the surface of what we knew about this disease? It was during this course I realized that I wanted to be one of the researchers behind the novel findings and projects embarking into the unknown.
In order to gain exposure to advanced science courses and tackle an independent research project, I embarked on a master’s degree. During my master’s degree at The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina, I conducted research that resulted in a first-author publication and awarded the Most Outstanding Graduate Student Award for my coursework and research accomplishments. The confidence I gained during my master’s degree fueled my desire to pursue a doctoral degree in Cell and Molecular Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics. My doctoral training at the Medical University of South Carolina focused on the fields of cancer biology and pharmacology with an emphasis on inhibiting metastatic spread of breast cancer. My project revealed a protein that promoted breast cancer metastasis, and these findings have the potential to translate into a positive impact for the overall survival of patients with metastatic breast cancers. During my doctoral training, I was first-author and co-author on numerous papers while also receiving a research award at the annual student research day.
I am currently pursuing a postdoctoral fellowship at Vanderbilt University under the Microenvironment Influences in Cancer Training Program (MICTP). My project is investigating mechanisms of treatment sensitivity and resistance in metastatic breast cancer, specifically in triple-negative breast cancer. We hope to find novel therapeutics for patients battling metastatic breast cancer that will increase their overall and metastasis-free survival. In addition, we hope this project will identify markers that can be used in the clinic to predict response and sensitivity to therapy in patients with metastatic breast cancer.”
Contact Information
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carly-bess-williams-m-a-a0247569/
ResearchGate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Carly_Williams
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