Theresa Mendoza received her BS with honors from the University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego). She majored in Biochemistry and Cell Biology and minored in Business. As a recipient of the Ledell Family Endowed Research Scholarship, she was able to conduct biomedical research under the mentorship of Dr. Christina Jamieson. Her research with the Jamieson lab was focused on establishing new 3D organoid cultures from patient-derived xenografts (PDX) of bone metastatic prostate cancer. She is now continuing her work on bone metastatic prostate cancer at the Moores Cancer Center as part of UC San Diego’s contiguous BS/MS program. Medicine is in a constant state of change. Therefore, Theresa is passionate about applying her knowledge of basic biological principles to develop research tools and disease models which could be used to fulfill unmet clinical needs.