Elba V. Caraballo PhD, MSc

Assistant Investigator Director- Division of Research and Education Support Associate Manager for Scientific Operations- Division Cancer Biology UPR- Comprehensive Cancer Center

Email: ecaraballo@cccupr.org

Complete list of publications: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=Caraballo+EV&cauthor_id=27149205

Dr. Elba Caraballo is an experienced scientist with an extensive background in molecular virology and immunodiagnostics. Throughout her career, Dr. Caraballo has worked and collaborated in over 6 research projects in fields including virology, molecular biology, arboviruses epidemiology and dengue immunodiagnostics assays improving its implementation as well as in the development of new research assays.

Dr. Caraballo obtained a PhD in microbiology and zoology, and Post-doctoral Master in Science in Clinical and Translational research at the University of Puerto Rico Medical Sciences Campus. During her education, she developed expertise in biostatistics, epidemiology, and study design. Currently, she is an Assistant Investigator in Gastrointestinal Oncology.

Her research is focused on discovery, testing, and validation of blood and molecular biomarkers, particularly those that could allow a non-invasive and cost-effective diagnosis of colorectal cancer, and predictive biomarkers and/or those that can be used for risk stratification. Dr. Caraballo is one of the investigators of the population-based Puerto Rico Familial Colorectal Cancer Registry (PURIFICAR), which currently has collected more than 3,000 gastrointestinal biospecimens from Puerto Rican Hispanics, a minority population with a high burden of gastrointestinal malignancies and health disparities that is under-represented in scientific research studies.