Athena Golfinos-Owens has always wanted to help people. After her undergraduate degree from UW-Madison, she worked as a technician to create antimicrobials and antibiotics, solidifying her passion for treating diseases from the lab. “I loved the idea that I could help people, but I could do it in a lab environment that allowed me to work with samples, develop assays, etc, in a way that excited me,” says Golfinos-Owens. “That was where I developed my interest in cellular and molecular biology and pathology.”
Golfinos-Owens is pursuing her PhD in the Cellular and Molecular Pathology program and has been working in the Huy Dinh Laboratory since 2021 with a focus on the tumor microenvironment. She and her lab use multi-omic analysis to characterize a person’s tumor with the goal of developing new treatments to combine with existing therapies. The ultimate goal is targeted treatments that are least likely to cause unnecessary added toxicities to the patient.
Golfinos-Owens has recently had a string of recognitions, including the Young Investigator Award presented to her at the 2024 Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer conference and the Scholar-in-Training award from the American Association for Cancer Research in 2022. As she wraps up work for her thesis defense in May, we asked her several questions about her time at UW-Madison.

What is the main goal of your research and what technologies do you focus on?
The main goal of my research is to interrogate the tumor microenvironment in patients who respond well, versus not as well, to their cancer treatment. If we can understand what mechanisms underlie response vs. resistance to treatment, we can better determine how to optimize treatment efficacy or select treatments that are most likely to work for each individual patient. We utilize multiple omics technologies, including bulk, single cell, and spatial transcriptomics methodologies. We like to combine single cell RNA-seq with one or multiple spatial transcriptomics methods (such as 10X Visium, Nanostring CosMx, or Akoya Phenocycler) to give us the best picture of the cellular heterogeneity in the tumor microenvironment and the spatial organization within the tumors.
What are the big picture questions and significance of this work?
I think one of the big picture questions is “How can we optimize cancer treatments for each patient?”. The future of this field is most definitely the use of combination therapies, as each patient’s cancer is very different from the next, even within the same cancer type. As such, we have to determine how the innate structure and composition of a tumor, along with any cellular or molecular biomarkers, can help us either develop new treatments to combine with existing therapies, or help us better screen patients for their compatibilities with individual treatments. One overarching goal of everyone in this field is that with the development of new biomarkers and treatment targets, each patient will receive the treatments that are most likely to work given the microenvironment of their tumor, and that are least likely to cause unnecessary added toxicities to the patient.
Has there been a single person, event, or experience that most influenced your trajectory to where you are today?
My family has always been incredibly encouraging of my love of science. While none of my other family members are scientists, they’ve always seen how much I love it and encouraged me to shoot for the stars. They’ve attended all my seminars, kept all the brochures from the conferences I attend, and asked for pictures of me at all of my poster sessions. I think that support of what I love has been really fundamental in all the choices I’ve made during graduate school, and it’s given me the motivation to apply for awards, present my work, and keep going even when things are challenging.
What advice do you have for a young person interested in graduate school or research?
I would highly recommend students interested in grad school/research to start doing research early. Even if you aren’t sure what research area you are interested in, just jump in! Try something new. If you like it, show your interest, show up consistently, ask questions, and try to get involved in an independent project or working with a particular grad student on one of their projects. That will give you the best idea of whether you like research, and it will also show your motivation for independent projects when you apply to grad school. Also, ask questions of your grad students! They know better than anyone what it is like to be in a research lab as a graduate student, so pick their brain.
Aside from her weekly Dungeons and Dragons session with her husband and friends, Athena is looking forward to defending her thesis in May 2025 and starting her position as a Senior Data Scientist at a pharmaceutical company.