Erika G. Marques de Menezes, Ph.D.
Assistant Investigator, Vitalant Research Institute
Assistant Professor, UCSF Department of Laboratory Medicine
Profile
Erika Marques de Menezes is an Assistant Investigator at Vitalant Research Institute (VRI) San Francisco and an Assistant Professor of Laboratory Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). She earned her Master and Ph.D. degrees from the Sao Paulo State University in Brazil. Dr. Marques de Menezes completed her post-doctoral work at VRI in the field of extracellular vesicles (EVs), making seminal observations about the association of EV type with disease states.
Dr. Marques de Menezes has received several awards, include the UCSF-CFAR Early-Career Award of Excellence in Basic Science and was the recipient of a 2023 AABB Foundation Early Career Scientific Research Grant. She has also received the prestigious NIH Director’s Pioneer Award (DP1) for early-stage investigators pursuing highly innovative and pioneering research on HIV comorbidities, coinfections, and complications.
- Assistant Investigator, Vitalant Research Institute
- Assistant Professor, UCSF Department of Laboratory Medicine
- B.S., Nutrition, Sao Paulo Central University Center
- M.S., Nutrition Sciences, Sao Paulo State University
- Ph.D., Nutrition Sciences, Sao Paulo State University
- Post Doctoral Research Fellow, Immunology, Extracellular Vesicles, HIV pathogenesis, VRI/UCSF
Kelly Lal
Research Associate I
- Assistant Investigator, Vitalant Research Institute
- Assistant Professor, UCSF Department of Laboratory Medicine
- B.S., Nutrition, Sao Paulo Central University Center
- M.S., Nutrition Sciences, Sao Paulo State University
- Ph.D., Nutrition Sciences, Sao Paulo State University
- Post Doctoral Research Fellow, Immunology, Extracellular Vesicles, HIV pathogenesis, VRI/UCSF
Kelly Lal
Research Associate I
Research Interests
The Marques de Menezes lab is dedicated to developing innovative, integrated approaches in the emerging field of EVs to identify potential predictor biomarkers and elucidate new putative targets for pharmacologic therapies that may be broadly applicable for the treatment of inflammatory heart disease in HIV+ and non-HIV populations. A second interest of our laboratory is exploring novel approaches in transfusion medicine, with special emphasis on how EVs and their cargo within stored platelet products impact the immune system and vascular activity in transfusion recipients. Our long-tem research goal is to develop engineered EVs to serve as novel therapeutic strategies to optimize health in the future.
EVs play a significant role in regulating pathophysiologic pathways like inflammation, and angiogenesis, and are therefore implicated in key aspects of multiple conditions including heart disease. It is known that cell-to-cell communication by EVs has the potential to affect target cells in a “two-way” or “multi-way” fashion. However, investigating this secreted EV-mediated shift of cell communication from a “landline” to “cell phone” fashion would help us understand the drivers of CVD risk, particularly in people living with HIV. We aim to create a new paradigm for discovering novel biomarkers and EV-based interactions that can be targeted to prevent immune activation, inflammation, and coagulopathy, which are important not just for HIV but for inflammatory heart disease in the general population.