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Kristin A. Altwegg, Ph.D.

TSIF Postdoctoral Fellow

Division of Preclinical Innovation    
National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences

National Institutes of Health

Biography

Kristin A. Altwegg, Ph.D.  
Kristin A. Altwegg, Ph.D.

Kristin Altwegg completed her initial undergraduate and graduate studies at Kansas State University. After graduation, she chose to pursue a career in the pharmaceutical industry focusing on drug development and delivery systems. During her time in industry, she came to appreciate that to lead research projects independently with direct human impact, she would need further training as a scientist. Altwegg returned to academia as a student researcher at The University of Texas (UT) at Austin and as the dietetics intern for the UT Austin Athletics Department. She participated in studies that focused on obesity-related diet–gene interactions in cancer outcomes and graduated in 2015 with university honors. Altwegg pursued her doctoral training in cancer biology in 2017 at The UT Health San Antonio Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences (GSBS). In her Ph.D. program, her research was funded both intramurally and extramurally by three training grants, including a National Cancer Institute F31 predoctoral fellowship. In June 2022, Altwegg successfully defended her dissertation and was recognized with the 2022 GSBS Outstanding Student Leadership Award and the 2022 Armand J. Guarino Award for Academic Excellence. At the national level, she serves as a representative for the American Association of Cancer (AACR) Early Career Hill Day. Altwegg also was elected to serve a three-year term on the AACR Associate Member Council, which is the leadership body representing more than 24,000 associate members of the AACR.

Altwegg chose the Translational Science Interagency Fellowship Program to enhance her career as a cancer research scientist focused on reducing the timeline between novel drug development and delivering safe and effective therapeutics for clinical use. This fellowship will facilitate a long-term, interagency, multidisciplinary translational approach to patient care. The collaborative environment will allow Altwegg the opportunity to potentially work with fellow scientists, physicians and other professionals who have the same goal of combating diseases, including cancers.

Select Publications

  1. Altwegg KA, Pratap UP, Liu Z, et al. Targeting PELP1 oncogenic signaling in TNBC with the small molecule inhibitor SMIP34. Breast Cancer Res Treat. 2023; 200(1):151-162. Available from: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37199805/ 
  2. Altwegg KA, Viswanadhapalli S, Mann M, et al. A first-in-class inhibitor of ER coregulator PELP1 targets ER+ breast cancer. Cancer Res. 2022;82(20):3830–3844. Available from: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35950923 
  3. Liu Z, Altwegg KA, Liu J, et al. Global genomic and proteomic analysis identified critical pathways modulated by proto-oncogene PELP1 in TNBC. Cancers (Basel). 2022;14(4):930. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8924758 
  4. Liu Z, Liu J, Ebrahimi B, et al. SETDB1 interactions with PELP1 contributes to breast cancer endocrine therapy resistance. Breast Cancer Res. 2022;24(1):26. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8991965 
  5. Altwegg KA, Vadlamudi RK. Role of estrogen receptor coregulators in endocrine resistant breast cancer. Explor Target Antitumor Ther. 2021;2:385–400. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8439438 
  6. Li M, Viswanadhapalli S, Santhamma B, et al. LIFR inhibition enhances the therapeutic efficacy of HDAC inhibitors in triple negative breast cancer. Commun Biol. 2021 Oct 29;4(1):1235. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8556368 

Last updated on April 22, 2024