Biography of Elsa R. Flores
Elsa R Flores, Ph D , has spent close to thirty years working at the intersection of laboratory discovery, bioengineering, academic leadership, and the training of new scientists. A translational cancer researcher, she currently holds the position of Senior Member in the Department of Molecular Oncology at Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, Florida, with secondary appointments in the Departments of Cutaneous Oncology and Thoracic Oncology. She additionally serves as a professor in the Department of Oncologic Sciences and the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of South Florida (USF) Health Morsani College of Medicine
The scientific core of her career lies in the p53 family of tumor suppressor genes. For more than two decades she has studied how p63 and p73 in particular affect the development of cancer, its spread
to distant sites, and its resistance to treatment. Her research has expanded what the field understands about the part these genes play in stem cell maintenance, metabolism, and tumor progression, and her results have appeared in some of the discipline's most prominent journals
Her academic foundation was laid at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), from which she graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering in 1994. A doctoral degree followed at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she completed a Ph D in Cancer Biology in 1999 and conducted her research at the McArdle Laboratory for Cancer Research. She then took up a postdoctoral fellowship in Cancer Biology at MIT
The first phase of her independent career unfolded at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. Hired as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Oncology in 2004, she was awarded tenure as an Associate Professor in 2010 and promoted to full Professor with tenure in 2015 Her contributions to the institution included leadership of the Genes and Development Graduate Ph.D. Program, first as Co-Director and then as Director, together with a role as Co-Leader of the Metastasis Research Program supported by MD Anderson's NCI Cancer Center Support Grant
The next phase began in 2016 with her move to Moffitt Cancer Center, where she was appointed Chair and Senior Member of the Department of Molecular Oncology and remained in that role until 2022 The move brought with it a tenured professorship at USF and leadership of the Cancer Biology and Evolution Program under Moffitt's NCI Cancer Center Support Grant She stepped into a wider administrative role in 2022 as Associate Center Director and Division Chief of Discovery Science, which she held through 2026, directing six academic departments that covered Drug Discovery, Immunology, Metabolism and Physiology, Molecular Oncology, Tumor Microenvironment and Metastasis, and Bioengineering and that together included 59 faculty members. During this period she helped bring Moffitt's Department of Bioengineering into being in 2022 and served as Executive Project Sponsor for the research programming, design, and construction of the Moffitt Discovery and Innovation Center at Speros.
Her research has been supported by a continuous stream of external funding In the capacity of Principal Investigator or Co-Principal Investigator, she has held numerous federally funded grants from the National Institutes of Health and the National Cancer Institute, including a long-running R35 Outstanding Investigator Award and a P01 program project grant concentrating on metabolic vulnerabilities in lung cancer Her recent funding features a 2026 All Star Translational Award from the V Foundation for Cancer Research, provided to advance work on "undruggable" pathways in tumor progression and therapy resistance The output of her laboratory also includes five patents and patent applications tied to p63 biology and cancer therapeutics, as well as a licensing agreement for the development of cancer progression biomarkers.
Numerous honors mark her record She held early fellowships from the National Institutes of Health, the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, and the American Cancer Society, and she was later named both a Rita Allen Foundation Scholar and an American Cancer Society Research Scholar. From 2016 to 2024 she held the NCI Outstanding Investigator Award She has been recognized as a Moffitt Distinguished Scholar for 2016 through 2026, was appointed the Kaul Foundation Endowed Chair in 2022, and was selected as a V Foundation All Star for the years 2026 to 2031. Her invitation to deliver
the AACR-Boston Ruth Sager Memorial Lecture in 2017 placed her among the leading researchers recognized in cancer biology
Service to the wider scientific enterprise has also occupied her She was Senior Editor of Cancer Research from 2016 to 2020 and has continued on the journal's editorial board since 2021, and she holds editorial board positions with Molecular Cancer Research and the Journal of Molecular Cell Biology as well She has chaired many NIH review panels and study sections, including terms as Chair of NIH/NCI-CAMP and NIH/NCI-GRIC, and she has organized and led several international scientific workshops, including multiple sessions of the p73/p63 International Workshop convened across the United States, Canada, Japan, and Europe
Mentorship has remained central throughout. Across her years at MD Anderson and Moffitt, she has guided many graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and junior faculty, a number of whom now lead their own research programs and chair academic departments She continues this work as co-director of an NIH-funded T32 training program in cancer and data science, an activity that runs alongside her research and administrative leadership. Her work continuing at Moffitt Cancer Center and USF, Dr Flores stands as a central figure in translational cancer research whose career has reached across discovery, bioengineering, leadership, and the development of scientific talent over nearly three decades.