M.D., Ph.D., M.P.H., M.S.
Assistant Professor, Department of Integrative Translational Sciences, City of Hope Cancer Center Duarte
Nuevo Leon State University, M.D., Medicine
Molecular and Experimental Medicine - Transplant Genomics, The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, CA
As an assistant professor of integrative translational sciences at City of Hope® Cancer Center Duate, Enrique Velazquez Villarreal, MD, PhD, MPH, MS, brings more than 14 years of experience in the field of translational multi-omics research, with a central focus on understanding and reducing colorectal cancer disparities in Hispanic/Latino communities.
A committed physician-scientist and computational geneticist, Dr. Velazquez Villarreal earned his medical degree in Mexico before completing a clinical fellowship in the Department of Surgery at Harvard Medical School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He went on to receive his PhD, MPH and MS degrees from the University of Pittsburgh in the departments of human genetics, epidemiology and multidisciplinary public health, as well as the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center. Prior to joining City of Hope, he served as an assistant professor in the Department of Translational Genomics at the Keck School of Medicine of USC in Los Angeles.
Dr. Velazquez Villareal’s innovative research includes creating computational tools for single-cell multi-omics sequencing and applying emerging spatial transcriptomics technologies within precision medicine. He has contributed to numerous research initiatives, including co-founding USC’s Bioinformatics Core and serving as a co-investigator on the NIH–NCI Colorectal Cancer Disparities Moonshot project. In 2022, he received the American Association for Cancer Research’s Minority and Minority-Serving Institution Faculty Scholar in Cancer Research Award.
At City of Hope, he continues to pursue molecular characterization of colorectal cancer tissues across diverse populations and to integrate clinical and multi-omics data to advance solutions in precision medicine.