Dr. Koutsioumpa received her first BSc in Chemistry from the Department of Chemistry (2001-2005) and her second BSc in Pharmacy (2006-2010) from the Department of Pharmacy at University of Patras in Greece. She received her Masters (2007) and PhD (2013) in Molecular Pharmacology and Clinical Pharmacy from the same University. Her primary research goals were directed towards the molecular characterization of pathways that underlie pathogenic processes such as tumor-related angiogenesis and oncogenesis. During her PhD, she mainly worked on the identification of proteins that interact with angiogenic factors implicated in tumor growth and aggressiveness and the elucidation of their functional role in vivo and in vitro. She identified the formation of a functional complex on the cell surface, as well the signaling cascade triggered by the latter, regulating endothelial and cancer cell migration. Recently, she has joined the Center for Gastrointestinal Systems Biology, Division of Digestive Diseases at UCLA as Postdoctoral Fellow. She focused her research on the advance understanding of mechanisms underlying tumorigenesis of cancers of the gastrointestinal track, by utilizing in vitro genetically modified cell lines coupled with innovative technology including high-throughput approaches. Her overall goal is to identify novel genomic/epigenomic mechanisms which will hopefully lead to the discovery of disease-specific biomarkers and therapeutic targets for clinical testing. Dr. Koutsioumpa has authored 8 original research articles, 3 review articles, and 1 book chapter. In addition, Dr. Koutsioumpa is recipient of a Doctoral Fellowship by ESF (European Social Fund) and has been awarded several times for her oral presentations in scientific conferences.

1 Gastrointestinal Cancers 2 Pancreatic cancer 3 Inflammatory Bowel Diseases 4 Angiogenesis 5 Growth factors 6 Cell Signalling 7 High throuput molecular data integration 8 Cell Proliferation 9 Cell Migration 10 Cancer Imaging