Andres Valdivia, PhD

Andres Valdivia, PhD

Dr. Andres Valdivia is currently a postdoctoral researcher in the laboratory of Dr. Daniela Matei in the Robert H Lurie Medical Research Center of Northwestern University. Andres graduated with an undergraduate degree in Biology from the Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile. Later he obtained a Masters in Biological science and Ph.D. in Physiology from the same university. During his Ph.D. thesis Andres work focused on understanding the process of tumor irrigation and metastasis in ovarian cancer, with an emphasis on the process of angiogenesis and vasculogenic mimicry. Later in 2019, Andres Joined the laboratory of Dr. Daniela Matei. Here, his work focusses mainly on the study of the interaction between cancer cells and adipocytes and the design of new co-culture models for the study of the metastatic process. With OCRA support, Andres is interested in further understanding the mechanism of the interaction between cancer and adipocytes and aims to determine the ways in which the immune system complement proteins C3 and C5 play a critical role in the interface of the two cell type interaction.