Dr. Valerie Odero-Marah received an MSc and PhD in Molecular Biology from Free University of Brussels, Brussels, Belgium, and University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa, respectively. During her postdoctoral training at Emory University, she worked with in vitro and in vivo animal metastasis models to establish epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) models in prostate cancer, and show the importance of the bone microenvironment in the induction of EMT.
Currently, Dr. Odero-Marah is a Professor of Biological Sciences at Clark Atlanta University (CAU) and member of the Center for Cancer Research and Therapeutic Development (CCRTD) at CAU whose main focus is prostate cancer research. She is also an adjunct Professor at Georgia Institute of Technology. She has been able to secure funding from both NIH and DOD and published in several peer-reviewed journals. She has identified novel roles for Snail transcription factor in the induction of neuroendocrine differentiation, reactive oxygen species, and bone osteoclastic markers and more recently, in cancer health disparities. Her research spans both prostate and breast cancer.
Dr. Odero-Marah serves as Assistant Director for the Research Core of CCRTD at Clark Atlanta University. She is also co-Leader of the African Caribbean Cancer Consortium (AC3) prostate working group, where she assists in organizing collaborative meetings between basic, clinical, and epidemiological scientists in USA, Caribbean and Africa.