Claudia Mercado Rodriguez,

I started carrying out cancer research at the Barts Cancer Institute in London (UK) during my bachelor’s thesis. It was then when I was sure that was what I wanted to work on in the future. For that reason, for my Master’s thesis I chose to join a lab that focused on breast cancer at Johns Hopkins (Baltimore, MD), and after finishing it I continued working there as a research assistant for another year. During that time I worked on a project that aimed to achieve early diagnosis of breast cancer based on DNA methylation levels in a panel of marker genes.

I became very interested in Dr. Christian Jobin’s lab research when I first heard of it, and when we met and he told me about a new project in their lab that involved DNA methylation studies I knew that was what I wanted to do as a PhD student. My studies at his lab focus on investigating the relationship between the microbiota and host DNA methylation profile and the impact that can have in pathologies such as CRC.