Dr. Cecilia Zurita-Lopez, Cal State LA assistant professor and biochemistry researcher, was awarded as a 2017 Emerging Scholar. As a researcher, she has made advances in detecting and modifying proteins which for improved disease detection.

Mimi Li, Staff Reporter February 24, 2017 Filed under News

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Dr. Cecilia Zurita-Lopez, a biochemistry faculty member at Cal State LA, is named one of the 2017 Emerging Scholars in Diverse: Issues in Higher Education for her research in biochemistry. She is featured alongside twelve other scholars for their academic achievements in higher education.

Growing up in La Puente, she studied biochemistry as an undergraduate student at Cal State LA. She attended graduate school at UCLA, focusing on biochemistry and molecular biology, and conducted postdoctoral research at Caltech and USC.

Zurita-Lopez was initially thinking about heading to medical school when she was in high school. This was during the time when her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer, so she had hoped to become a doctor to help cure patients. She also noticed that many of the medications that her mother was taking were for the purposes of reversing the side effects of others. Her mother passed away when she was an undergraduate student.

When I went to Cal State LA, that was my motivation, I thought I wanted to go to medical school, said Zurita-Lopez. And it wasnt until I realized that when you study biochemistry, you can design and do more work to contribute for better medical care. Unlike medical school, you also get to use your creativity to solve problems.

As a postdoctoral researcher at USC, she was a part of a biomedical engineering lab. She collaborated with other researchers to develop a light sensor to detect DNA and protein methylation. In detecting methylation, it is possible to detect cancer at its early stages. Unlike other types of detectors, the researchers measured methylation using changes in the wavelengths of light.

Her research in proteins can be applied to many diseases such as cancer and Alzheimers. In a disease state, she explains, proteins modifications are different and can often change each other incorrectly. In particular, she studies arginine methylation by enzymes called methyltransferases.

I think the long term goal for any researcher is to try to find cures but on a day to day, more than anything, we just want to understand whats happening in the cell, so even that, just to understand whats happening in a healthy cell versus a diseased cell, just to understand the rules would really help us, says Zurita-Lopez.

Zurita-Lopez is grateful to have come back to Cal State LA as an assistant professor since 2014. She enjoys mentoring students in her lab and seeing them excel in their educational pursuits as graduate students. Additionally, she contributes to the Minority Opportunities in Research Programs at Cal State LA.

My advice is not to give up! If you really like what youre doing and like what youre studying put in the time to study and to learn about careers, to make it a point to learn about all the opportunities that are out there, she says. There are many, many programs and internships for students in STEM, so I try to encourage my students to look for these opportunities because thats what makes them stand out and have an edge.

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Biochemistry professor named Emerging Scholar - CSULA University Times