University of California Irvine
Irvine, California, United States
Prof. Bota graduated from Carol Davila University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Bucharest in 1997 with an MD degree. The same year, she started her doctoral studies at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California, which she completed in 2002 with a PhD in Molecular and Computational Biology.
She concluded her Neurology residency at the University of Kansas Medical Center in 2006, and her Neurological Oncology fellowship at The Preston Robert Tisch Brain Tumor Center, Duke University in 2007. Shortly afterwards, she became the Medical Director of UC Irvine’s Comprehensive Brain Tumor Program.
Dr. Bota’s clinical interests include developing new treatments for primary and secondary brain and spinal cord tumors, as well as the treatment of cancer-induced cognitive deficits. She is the principal investigator for a number of both investigator-initiated and consortium, NCI, and FDA supported clinical trials for brain and spinal cord malignancies.
Her laboratory research focuses on glioma stem-like cells and their role in glioma progression and response to treatment, and on the development of new treatments to fight this universally fatal disease.
A second theme of research in her laboratory is the understanding of neurobiological mechanisms underlying the profound problem of the cognitive dysfunction seen in cancer survivors treated with chemotherapy.
Recently, Prof. Bota has assumed the leadership of the clinical activities for the prestigious Sue and Bill Gross Stem Cell Research Institute at University of California, Irvine. In her new leadership role, she is guiding the efforts of her basic and translational science colleagues toward innovative clinical trials, using the power of stem cells for a wide variety of human diseases from degenerative neurological diseases to cancer.
