Academic History

Alexandra Drakaki, MD, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Hematology & Oncology and Urology, and a member of the Signal Transduction and Therapeutics Program at the University of California, Los Angeles, CA. Dr Drakaki completed her medical degree at the University of Crete, Heraklion, Greece, and her internship and residency in Internal Medicine at St Elizabeth’s Medical Center, Boston, MA. She subsequently completed a fellowship in Hematology & Oncology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center at Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, and a research fellowship at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

Speaking on novel therapeutics and the role of non-coding RNAs in genitourinary cancers

Dr Drakaki specializes in the management of genitourinary (GU) cancers, with an emphasis on bladder, kidney, prostate and testicular cancers, and has served as Principal Investigator in several trials evaluating novel drugs. Her primary research interest is in the role of non-coding RNAs in GU cancers, including identifying how they can be dysregulated in cancers and their role in driving oncogenesis. She hopes to develop chemically modified oligonucleotide inhibitors to modify the expression levels of dysregulated non-coding RNAs to translate her research into clinically applicable therapeutics.