Skip to main content.

Luis Cortez

Luis Cortez
Graduate Student - Bret Freudenthal Lab
lcortez2@kumc.edu

Professional Background

I graduated from Washington State University in 2016 with Bachelor of Science degrees in Biochemistry and Genetics, with minors in chemistry and physics. During my time at WSU I worked with Dr. Steven Roberts, assisting his investigations into how mutations in DNA contribute to disease origination and whether the processes that cause mutations can be prevented to mitigate disease. Using yeast and human cell culture, I investigated how the APOBEC cytidine deaminases (which normally function as part of the innate immune system, but when dysregulated can have off target activity towards genomic DNA) induce DNA damage and the pathways by which cells mitigate their effects. 

I joined the MD/PhD program here at KUMC in 2019 and after completing my first two years of medical school, I joined the Laboratory of Genome Maintenance and Structural Biology run by Dr. Bret Freudenthal. Here I am continuing to study the effects of DNA damage on disease origination and progression. Specifically, I am using a combination of biophysical, biochemical, and cellular assays to determine the structural and biological effects of ribonucleotide mis-insertion into telomeric DNA and the cellular pathways that repair these lesions.  

 


KU School of Medicine

University of Kansas Medical Center
Cancer Biology
3901 Rainbow Boulevard
Mailstop1071
Kansas City, KS  66160
cancerbiology@kumc.edu