Assistant Professor, Department of Integrative Translational Sciences
As an assistant professor in City of Hope®’s Department of Integrative Translational Sciences, Enrique Velazquez Villarreal, M.D., Ph.D., M.P.H., M.S., brings more than 14 years’ expertise in translational multi-omics research, with a particular emphasis on addressing colorectal cancer health disparities in Hispanic/Latino communities.
A dedicated physician-scientist and computational geneticist, Dr. Velazquez Villarreal received his M.D. in Mexico, then completed a clinical fellowship at Harvard Medical School’s Department of Surgery and received a Ph.D., M.P.H. and M.S. at the University of Pittsburgh’s Departments of Human Genetics, Epidemiology and Multidisciplinary Public Health and the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center. Prior to joining City of Hope, he was an assistant professor in the Department of Translational Genomics at the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California (USC).
Dr. Velazquez Villarreal’s innovative work includes the development of computational protocols for single-cell multi-omics sequencing and the application of new technologies in spatial transcriptomics within the realm of precision medicine. He has been involved in multiple research programs and projects, including as a founder of USC’s Bioinformatics Core and a co-investigator on the National Institutes of Health-National Cancer Institute Colorectal Cancer Disparities Moonshot project. He was honored with the American Association for Cancer Research’s Minority and Minority-Serving Institution Faculty Scholar in Cancer Research Award in 2022.
In his role at City of Hope, he continues to focus on molecularly characterizing colorectal cancer tissues in diverse populations and integrating clinical and multi-omics data to address challenges in the field of precision medicine.Â