Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences
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Angélica Olmo-Fontánez, M.S.

Ph.D. Student

Angélica Olmo-Fontánez is a Ph.D. student in the Cell Biology, Genetics, and Molecular Medicine Discipline of the Integrated Biomedical Sciences program at UT Health San Antonio. Angélica is a recipient of an NIH National Institute on Aging F99/K00 grant and was awarded the “2022 IMDS Student of the Year”. Angélica is investigating the influence of the human lung mucosa on Mycobacterium tuberculosis pathogenesis, under the supervision of Dr. Jordi B. Torrelles at Texas Biomedical Research Institute. For her research, she is studying molecular and cellular oxidative changes in the alveolar lining fluid (ALF) of young and elderly human subjects to improve understanding of inflammatory changes in the lung in old age that can impact human health. She is also studying how age-associated changes in human ALF influence Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection of alveolar epithelial cells.

Education

M.S., Biology: Microbial Ecology, University of Puerto Rico-Mayagüez

B.S., Industrial Microbiology, University of Puerto Rico-Mayagüez

Awards

2022 National Institute on Aging F99/K00 award

2022 IMDS Student of the Year

2021 AAI Registration Grant for the European Congress of Immunology

2021 Excellence in Research Junior IMDS Student of the Year

2021 AAI Minority Scientist Award

2020 Douglass Graduate Student Fellowship

Publications

  • Olmo-Fontánez A.M., Scordo J.M., Garcia-Vilanova A., Maselli D.J., Peters J., Restrepo, B.l., Clemens D.L., Turner J., Schlesinger L.S., and Torrelles J.B. (2022) Human alveolar lining fluid from the elderly promotes Mycobacterium tuberculosis growth in alveolar epithelial cells and bacterial translocation into the cytosol. [BioRxiv Pre-print May, 2021: BIORXIV/2021/443884]

 

 

  • Scordo J.M., Piergallini T.J., Olmo-Fontánez A.M., et al. (2022) Recall responses in the lung environment are impacted by age in a pilot study of Mycobacterium bovis-BCG vaccinated rhesus macaques. Exp Gerontol. 2022 Oct 1;167:111904. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.exger.2022.111904

 

  • Garcia-Vilanova A. Olmo-Fontánez A.M., Moliva J.I., Allué-Guardia, A., Harjinder S., Merrit R.E., Caceres, D., Peters J., Restrepo, B., Wang, Y., Schlesinger L.S.,  Turner J., Weintraub S.T., Torrelles J.B. (2022) The aging lung mucosa: A proteomics study. The Journals of Gerontology: Series A, 2022;, glac091. https://doi.org/10.1093/gerona/glac091 

 

  • Allué-Guardia A., Garcia-Vilanova A. Olmo-Fontánez A.M., Peters J., Maselli D.J., Turner J., Schlesinger L.S., and Torrelles J.B. (2022) Host-and age-dependent transcriptional changes in Mycobacterium tuberculosis cell envelope biosynthesis genes after exposure to human alveolar lining fluid. International Journal of Molecular Sciences. 23(2):983. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijms23020983  

 

  • Olmo-Fontánez A. M., Scordo J. M., Garcia-Vilanova A., Maselli-Caceres D., Peters J., Clemens D., Turner J., Schlesinger L. S., and Torrelles J. B.  (2021) Effect of the elderly human lung mucosa on Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection of the alveolar epithelium. J Immunol. 206 (1 Supplement) 65.07.

 

  • Olmo-Fontánez A.M. and Torrelles J.B. (2021) Alveolar Epithelial Cells. In: Karakousis P.C., Hafner R., Gennaro M.L. (eds) Advances in Host-Directed Therapies Against Tuberculosis. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56905-1_16

 

  • Singh D.K., Singh B., Ganatra S.R., Gazi M., Cole J., Thippeshappa R., Alfson K.J., Clemmons E., Gonzalez O., Escobedo R., Lee T.H., Chatterjee A., Goez-Gazi Y., Sharan R., Gough M., Alvarez, C., Blakley A., Ferdin F., Bartley C., Staples H., Parodi L., Callery J., Manino A., Klaffke B., Escareno P., Platt R., Hodara V., Scordo J., Gautam S., Vilanova A.G., Olmo-Fontánez A.M., et al. (2021). Responses to acute infection with SARS-CoV-2 in the lungs of rhesus macaques, baboons and marmosets. Nature Microbiology 6, 73–86. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41564-020-00841-4

 

  • Oladunni F.S., Park JG., Pino P.A. Gonzalez O., Akhter A., Allué-Guardia A., Olmo-Fontánez A.M., et al. (2020). Lethality of SARS-CoV-2 infection in K18 human angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 transgenic mice. Nature Communications 11, 6122. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-19891-7

 

  • Moliva JI, Duncan MA*, Olmo-Fontánez A.M.*, Akhter A, Ault R, Sasindran SJ, Reinhold-Larsson N, Rajaram MVS, Merrit RE, Lafuse WP, Zhang L, Wang S-H, Beamer G, Wang Y, Turner J, Schlesinger LS, Torrelles JB (2019). Declining innate host defense functions of the lung mucosa in the elderly drives host susceptibility to Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection. Journal of Infectious Diseases, 220:514-523. https://doi.org/10.1093/infdis/jiz138

 

  • Scordo JM, Olmo-Fontánez A.M., Kelley HV, Sidiki S, Arcos J, Akhter A, Wewers MD, and Torrelles JB (2019). The Human Lung Mucosa Drives Differential Mycobacterium tuberculosis Infection Outcome in the Alveolar Epithelium. Mucosal Immunology, 12:795–804 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41385-019-0156-2