Biography
Ms. Reham Ajina is a fifth year PhD candidate in the Tumor Biology Program at Georgetown University’s Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center. Her goal is to become a leading scientist who conducts pioneering, clinically translatable research in the field of cancer immunology. The first step toward her goal is to obtain a Ph.D degree at an exceptional cancer biology-focused program and to be mentored by a world-expert in the field, which she is currently doing. When she first joined Dr. Louis M. Weiner laboratory for a rotation, she contributed to a project studying how immune selection pressure can manipulate breast cancer epithelial cells at a single cell level, using an unbiased in vivo genome-wide RNAi library. This work led to her inclusion as second author on a paper published in Cancer Immunology, Immunotherapy. Concurrently, Reham published a comprehensive chapter entitled “Cancer Immunotherapy”. After finishing her graduate student rotation, she started her thesis project in the same lab, entitled “Identifying Molecular Determinants of Immune Rejection in Pancreatic Cancer”. Also, Reham has taken the lead in developing two additional projects. First, she has identified that SpCas9-expression by tumor cells cause T cell-dependent tumor rejection in immunocompetent mice, which has led to a first-author paper currently in Press at Oncoimmunology. The second project is focusing on identifying and characterizing cancer neoantigens by advanced computational means. In order to move forward with all these projects, Reham mastered many complicated approaches with creativity and persistence. Also, she has established many collaborations with young investigators as well as with world's leading scientists. In addition, Reham’s intellect is reflected by her academic performance. She obtained her bachelor of science in 2011, where she graduated as valedictorian amongst Medical Laboratory Technology majors. As there is little to no expertise in the field of cancer immunology in her own country, Reham is planning to be a university professor in Saudi Arabia, aiming to share her knowledge and expertise with her future students and colleagues. Driven by her ambition, before finishing her internship, Reham was recruited as a junior faculty by King Saud bin Abdulaziz University for Health Sciences in Saudi Arabia. Indeed, this job offered her full tuition scholarships to pursue her MS and Ph.D degrees. Thus, once Reham completed her bachelor’s degree, she did her Master’s in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Georgetown University in 2014, where she again graduated first in her class. Then, she directly joined the Ph.D program in the Tumor Biology department. Furthermore, Reham has done exceptionally well in other areas, including writing, teaching, and poster and oral presentations. In the last three years, Reham has published two papers, a review article, a chapter, and two abstracts. Also, she is currently writing a new first-author manuscript as well as a second review article. While she is enjoying her Ph.D journey, she has also become a wife and mom. Despite the difficulty of creating a balance, with her deep passion for science, she has been able to achieve all these accomplishments.
Interests
Cancer Immunology, Pancreatic Cancer and Tumor Biology.
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