“And then this wonderful honor happened,” Dr. Mihaylova says of her involvement in the Herbert and Maxine Block Memorial Lectureship Award for Distinguished Achievement in Cancer. Dr. Mihaylova was the second recipient of the award that pairs the lectureship winner as a mentor to a young, promising OSUCCC – James researcher. Elaine Fuchs, PhD, was the 2019 Block Lectureship Award recipient. Dr. Fuchs is an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the Rebecca C. Lancefield Professor of Mammalian Cell Biology and Development at the Rockefeller University in New York City. She is a leader in the study of the connection between skin stem cells and cancer.
“I’ve been following Elaine’s work since I was in graduate school. She’s a pioneer in the stem cell field,” Dr. Mihaylova says. “When I saw her name as the recipient, I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be amazing if I’m selected?’”
Dr. Mihaylova was indeed selected as the Block mentee and first met Dr. Fuchs when she delivered her Block Lecture in November 2019. Several months after the award presentation, Dr. Mihaylova, like many other researchers, had to temporarily shut down her lab in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. During this uncertain time, she continued to receive mentorship from Dr. Fuchs; the two exchanged information and progress reports on their work, and they made plans to meet in person in the future.
From Bulgaria to Bexley
Dr. Mihaylova and her family emigrated from Bulgaria to central Ohio when she was 12. While still in high school, she worked in a lab at Nationwide Children’s Hospital. “I fell in love with the lab atmosphere.” She majored in molecular genetics and continued her lab work at the Nationwide Children’s Hospital Research Institute during her undergraduate years. Dr. Mihaylova went on to obtain her PhD at the University of California, San Diego, and the Salk Institute of Biological Studies. She did her postdoctoral training at MIT. Her focus in her independent lab has been on understanding how cells sense and utilize nutrients in both healthy and diseased states. In the past several years, her lab has been working to uncover metabolic vulnerabilities in cancer cells in hopes of improving cancer treatment for patients.