Danielle Sawyer, Ph.D.

I grew up in Windsor, a small town in Northern California. As a first generation college student, I attended a community college prior to transferring to University of California, Davis. My experience as a first-generation student trying to navigate the road to Medical School has made me passionate about mentoring and supporting other first generation or non-traditional students. Are you a pre-medical student reading this? If so, please reach out with any questions or to set up a meeting. 

My research career began at The Buck Institute in Dr. Brian Kennedy's lab, where I worked with Dr. Mark McCormick studing genes that may contribute to aging and longevity. I later performed research through University of California, Davis in the McKenney and Ori-McKenney labs, where we studied microtubule dynamics and the interaction of microtubules with their associated proteins (MAPs), in vitro. My clinical experiences include working as a medical scribe at a Hematology/Oncology clinic in Northern California. My passion to help and impact patients directly, and my desire to understand underlying disease mechanisms and help patients on a more global scale, lead me to pursue a career as a Physician-Scientist at The University of Arizona, College of Medicine - Tucson.

For my Ph.D., I worked in the lab of Dr. Joann Sweasy, Ph.D. at the University of Arizona Cancer Center. The focus of my work was to study germline variants of DNA polymerase beta that exist in the human population and are seen in patients with cancer. My work revealed a novel S180R variant of DNA polymerase beta that exhibits altered kinetcs - it is slow to incorporate nucleotides but it also has the propensity to incorporate mutations into DNA. This suggests that this variant could be contributing to the formation of cancer in patients harboring this mutation. My overall research goals include working to understand genetic mutations that drive cancer formation, understand drug resistance mechanisms, as well as develop precision medicine therapies. 

In my spare time, I love to bake, I enjoy watching horror films, and I love to dance. In fact, my husband and I have been taking Ballroom dance lessons - the west coast swing and salsa are our current favorites!