Carolina Panis, PhD

Associate Professor Head of Laboratory of Tumor Biology State University of Western Paraná
Francisco Beltrão, Brazil

Carolina Panis

Carolina Panis, PhD, is Associate Professor of Medicine at Western Paraná State University (UNIOESTE, Brazil) and Visiting Researcher at Harvard University and the University of Arizona. She holds postdoctoral fellowships in Oncology (INCA) and Pathology (UEL), focusing on breast cancer genomics, immunopathology, and chemoresistance. Her research investigates the impact of pesticide exposure on cancer aggressiveness and tumor immunopathology mechanisms. Dr. Panis coordinates the Tumor Biology Laboratory and the Micropollutant Residue Analysis Laboratory at UNIOESTE, and collaborates with leading institutions in Brazil and abroad.

Dr. Panis runs a laboratory that researches cancer biology, focusing on human breast cancer and hematological neoplasia. Most of the studies have investigated the role of oxidative stress and inflammation and the environmental risk factors that may determine disease prognosis, especially in rural women occupationally exposed to pesticides. The introduction of a recent literature review by Dr. Panis and coauthor Bernardo Lemos, PhD, states, “Breast cancer (BC) is the most diagnosed cancer in women worldwide. Both genetic and nongenetic risk factors influence this multifactorial disease. In the last two decades, BC incidence has increased by approximately 0.5 % per year, but the reasons for this steady increase have remained unclear. Overall, BC remains a significant global public health challenge despite significant advances in disease diagnosis and treatment.” The study notes, “It is estimated that genetic predispositions contribute to up to 10 % of BC cases, related to a specific group of well-documented heritable risk genes, including mutations in the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes.”

In their review, “Pesticide exposure and increased breast cancer risk in women population studies,” released last year, Dr. Panis and coauthor write that a number of pesticides “can increase the risk of BC development through various mutagenic and nonmutagenic mechanisms and can act directly as carcinogens or indirectly as biochemical modifiers and hormonal deregulators. The underlying mechanisms include endocrine disruption; genotoxicity; epigenetic changes; enhanced cell migration, invasion, and. . .” more.

Dr. Panis received her PhD in Experimental Pathology from Londrina State University.