Elaine T. Alarid , PhD

Dr. Elaine Alarid is a Professor in the Department of Oncology and McArdle Laboratory for Cancer Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She received her PhD from University of California at Berkeley, and did post-doctoral training at University of California San Francisco and University of California San Diego, before moving to Madison Wisconsin. Her long-time research interest has been in the regulation of hormone action in development and cancer. Her research training includes comparative, human and molecular endocrinology using in vivo and in vitro techniques. Because endocrinology is a major regulatory system, it follows that her research interest has evolved to include integrative approaches toward understanding hormone action. A major focus of her laboratory is on the circuitry controlling estrogen receptor activity and how modulating that activity tunes and controls cancer cell dependency on hormone. This provides the mechanistic basis for better understanding the transitions between hormone-dependence and hormone-independence, and how key decision points might be exploited to control tumor cell behavior. The work in her laboratory covers a breadth of disciplines from cellular and molecular biology, biochemistry, structural biology, bioengineering as well as tumor biology. She joined the Endocrine Society as a graduate student, and served on the editorial board of Endocrinology. She has served on the Minority Action Committee and the Basic Science Task Force and is currently a member of the Research Affairs Core Committee.