Dr. Sonia Franco is a research scientist in the Molecular Radiation Sciences Division of the Radiation Oncology Department. Prior to her appointment to Faculty in 2008, Dr. Franco completed a clinical Fellowship in Pediatric Hematology-Oncology at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York and a postdoctoral research Fellowship at Harvard University in Boston. She is Board-certified in Pediatrics and a Fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

The Franco Laboratory studies the basic mechanisms that maintain genomic integrity in mammalian cells. To this end, the lab uses mice that are prone to cancer because they are deficient (knock-out) for specific factors involved in the repair of DNA damage. In the absence of these factors, chromosomes break or undergo abnormal rearrangements, which favor the appearance of malignant cells.

In addition, the lab is interested in understanding how radiotherapy and chemotherapy introduce lesions into DNA and how normal and tumor cells repair those lesions. This knowledge will lead to the development of rational guidelines for combiningcancer treatments that synergize in killing cancer cells.