Moralba Dominguez Garcia, PhD, is a Research Scholar helping to develop radiopharmaceuticals in the Jason Lewis Lab.
For Moralba (Mora) Dominguez Garcia, PhD, being a Research Scholar developing radiopharmaceuticals against cancer is a dream come true.
Like so many trainees who come to Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) from around the world after earning a PhD, she was drawn by the mission. “MSK is the place where we try to do something good — to cure cancer.”
Mora says her journey was quite unconventional. “Life is very weird, the ways that get chosen for you,” she says. She was raised in Cali, Colombia, by parents who never went to college but prized education. They had two non-negotiable rules for their three studious daughters: good grades in school and then sports.
Dr. Dominguez Garcia and a colleague in the Jason Lewis Lab.
For Mora, math, chemistry, and physics were a piece of cake. The science-minded girl aced them all and eventually fell in love with research, specifically chemistry. “I wanted to do something that creates knowledge and can help other people,” she says.
The sports requirement was not so easy to balance with her studies. Her mother found an extracurricular track-and-field practice that would fit into Mora’s schedule and signed up her preteen daughter for the high jump.
“Every day I was training with professional athletes. Obviously, it was a lot of effort for me,” she laughs, remembering her struggle to keep up with them.
But their competitive spirit lit a fire. “Just watching them, I was, like, Oh, my gosh, yeah. I want to try that.”
By the time Mora was in her second year of college, she had become an elite athlete, a pole vaulter who had started to compete internationally, and the first and only female pole vaulter in her state for several years. The sport found her, she believes. Serendipity.
But after two injuries, she had to leave the field, and she dove back into science.
Mora is now training in the Jason Lewis Lab in a rapidly evolving field of precision medicine called radiotheranostics, which combines diagnostic imaging with targeted therapy for specific types of cancer. She is investigating strategies that use radiation for the simultaneous early detection and treatment of pancreatic cancer.
She’s exploring the integration of radio chemistry with antibody drug conjugates (ADCs), which are designed to target and kill tumor cells while leaving healthy cells. She describes it as a kind of dual therapy, one part drug and one part radiation to improve the therapeutic effect.
“Maybe, one day, my work will help save the life of someone,” Mora hopes.
As always, Mora has set a high bar for herself, determined to clear the hurdles.