Alfonso Enrique Bencomo-Alvarez

St. Jude Children's Research Hospital · Department of Infectious Diseases

Background Breast cancer (BC) affects racial and ethnic groups differently, leading to disparities in clinical presentation and outcomes. It is unclear how Hispanic ethnicity affects BC outcomes based on geographic location and proximity to the United States (U.S.)/Mexico border. We hypothesized that the impact of race/ethnicity on BC outcomes depe...

Objective: Human papillomavirus (HPV) is associated with cervical cancer. For the infection to occur, most HPV types depend on interactions with heparan sulfate proteoglycans (HSPGs); however, non-HSPGs receptors are also involved. Laminin 332 is a crucial component of the epidermis's base membrane. It has shown interactions with HPV that suggest...

Purpose: Breast cancer (BC) is the leading cause of cancer related deaths in Hispanic women. Hispanics make up an estimated 82% of the U.S./Mexico border, a region of socioeconomic inequity and barriers to healthcare access. Identifying disparities affecting BC incidence and overall survival (OS) is a priority for optimizing care in this medically...

Tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs) targeting BCR::ABL1 have turned chronic myeloid leukaemia (CML) from a fatal disease into a manageable condition for most patients. Despite improved survival, targeting drug-resistant leukaemia stem cells (LSCs) remains a challenge for curative CML therapy. Aberrant lipid metabolism can have a large impact on membr...

26S proteasome non-ATPase subunits 1 (PSMD1) and 3 (PSMD3) were recently identified as prognostic biomarkers and potential therapeutic targets in chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) and multiple solid tumors. In the present study, we analyzed the expression of 19S proteasome subunits in acute myeloid leukemia (AML) patients with mutations in the FMS-lik...

Context: Multiple myeloma (MM) is the second most common hematological malignancy in the USA, constituting 1.8% of new cases (SEER database). It is a heterogeneous disease that is influenced by sociodemographic factors, with poor survival in non-Hispanic (NH) Blacks and Whites (Pulte et al. 2014). But, clinical characteristics and outcomes of MM a...

Background: Breast cancer (BC) is the leading cause of cancer related deaths in Hispanic women. Hispanics make up an estimated 82% of the US/Mexico border, a region characterized by socioeconomic inequity and barriers to healthcare access. Identifying disparities associated with BC incidence and overall survival (OS) is a priority for allocating re...

Ever since the ubiquitin proteasome system was characterized, efforts have been made to manipulate its function to abrogate the progression of cancer. As a result, the anticancer drugs bortezomib, carfilzomib, and ixazomib targeting the 26S proteasome were developed to treat multiple myeloma, mantle cell lymphoma, diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, col...

Ever since the ubiquitin proteasome system was characterized, efforts have been made to manipulate its function to abrogate the progression of cancer. As a result, the anti-cancer drugs bortezomib, carfilzomib, and ixazomib targeting the 26S proteasome were developed to treat multiple myeloma, mantle cell lymphoma, and diffuse large B-cell lymphoma...

Background: Human papillomavirus (HPV) is recognized as the most important cofactor in the etiology of cancers of the cervix, esophagus, larynx, and nasopharynx. Experimental evidence suggests that HPV could have an oncogenic influence on thyroid follicular cells; however, to the best of our knowledge, there is no record of its role in human thyro...

Tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs) targeting BCR-ABL1 have revolutionized therapy for chronic myeloid leukemia (CML), paving the way for clinical development in other diseases. Despite success, targeting leukemic stem cells and overcoming drug resistance remain challenges for curative cancer therapy. To identify drivers of kinase-independent TKI res...

Cancer is a challenging, multifaceted disease that involves a combination of biological and non-biological factors. Aside from COVID-19, cancer is the second leading cause of death in the United States (U.S.), and the first among Hispanic Americans. The Hispanic population is the largest minority group in the U.S., which is rapidly growing in size....

Background The Texas/Chihuahua (US/Mexico) border is a medically underserved region with many reported barriers for health care access. Although Hispanic ethnicity is associated with health disparities for many different diseases, the population‐based estimates of incidence and survival for patients with blood cancer along the border are unknown. T...

Tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs) targeting BCR-ABL1 are effective at eliminating most BCR-ABL1⁺ cells in chronic myeloid leukemia (CML), but do not target CML leukemic stem cells (LSCs), which are independent of BCR-ABL1 kinase activity. Our previous work showed that BCR-ABL1-independent resistance is largely driven by STAT3 (Eiring et al. Leukemi...

Tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs) targeting BCR-ABL1 have turned chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) from a fatal to a chronic disease. However, resistance is a clinical problem, and TKIs do not target CML leukemic stem cells (LSC), which are independent from BCR-ABL1 kinase activity. To understand mechanisms driving BCR-ABL1-independent resistance, we...

Introduction: Hispanics represent the largest minority group in the United States (U.S.), with 57.5 million individuals. The majority of Hispanics in the U.S. reside in the Southwest region, and >11 million live in the state of Texas. Health disparities for Hispanic cancer patients have previously been linked to disproportionate poverty and other b...

Tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs) targeting BCR-ABL1 are remarkably effective therapies in chronic myeloid leukemia (CML). Despite clinical success, TKIs do not target the CML leukemic stem cell (LSC), and the majority of patients must be treated for life to maintain remission. Our previous work has shown that BCR-ABL1-independent resistance is dri...

Introduction: Hispanics represent the largest minority group in the United States (U.S.), with 57.5 million individuals (18% of the population). Most U.S. Hispanics are of Mexican origin (63.2%), followed by Puerto Rican (9.5%), Cuban (3.9%), Salvadoran (3.8%), and Dominican (3.3%), but distribution varies by state. The majority of Hispanics in the...

Despite significant advances in the treatment of myeloid malignancies, many patients become resistant to therapy and ultimately succumb to their disease. Accumulating evidence over the past several years has suggested that the inadequacy of many leukaemia therapies results from their failure to target the leukaemic stem cell (LSC). For this reason,...

Persistent infection with human papillomavirus (HPV) has been recognized as the main etiological factor of morbimortality in cervical cancer. Several factors have been associated with the development of cervical disease, but viral load has recently been proposed as an indicator of cervical neoplasia. Therefore, a single measurement of viral load co...

Objective: Estimate the HPV frequency and types in neoplastic thyroid tissue by means of Polymerase Chain Reaction-Restriction Fragments Length Polymorphisms (PCR-RFLP). Method: Transversal study. We analyzed 157 samples from malignant and benign thyroid tumors of paraffin-embedded tissue. All the paraffin blocks were randomly chosen from the archi...