Growing up in Mexico, Enrique Velazquez Villarreal, M.D., Ph.D., M.P.H., M.S., was interested in healing processes and helping people from a young age. After a long academic journey that involved multiple countries and states and resulted in four advanced degrees, he started a medical career in Southern California in 2017. Now, as an assistant professor in City of Hope’s Department of Integrative Translational Sciences, Dr. Velazquez Villarreal is leading innovative translational research with a focus on addressing colorectal cancer health disparities in Hispanic and Latino communities.
Inspired by Nature
Raised in Torreón, a city in the northern Mexican state of Coahuila, Dr. Velazquez Villarreal became curious about health through his mother, who had a strong interest in natural remedies. An elementary school teacher by profession, she also often helped relatives and neighbors treat ailments with herbs and other plants.
“I would think about the science, how plants work to provide natural medicine methods that are a collection of knowledge from many, many years,” said Dr. Velazquez Villarreal. “She helped me go through them and try to figure it out. I still have all those natural remedies in my head.”
Dr. Velazquez Villarreal’s curiosity and intelligence helped him secure a scholarship to a high school that helped set him up for academic success. Upon graduation, he was admitted to a very competitive university, where he would continue his investigations into health.
“I was the first in my family to go to university and migrated alone, at the age of 17, from Torreón to Monterrey to study medicine at Nuevo Leon State University,” he said. Unlike in the U.S., students in Mexico can begin a seven-year medical degree program straight out of high school. “The program was very competitive: Around 2,500 people apply to get 700 places, and just 70 people graduate.”
Commitment to Cancer Fueled by Tragedy
Dr. Velazquez Villarreal was one of those 70 people, and the experience led to another decade of deep learning. But as Dr. Velazquez Villarreal pursued his studies in many areas, including neuroscience, mental health, informatics, genetics and more, a disturbing series of events would influence his eventual research focus.
“A professor who discovered me during medical degree training and became my mentor, giving me opportunities to teach and grow, unfortunately got colorectal cancer right before I graduated,” Dr. Velazquez Villarreal said. He subsequently lost both his Ph.D. mentor at the University of Pittsburgh and his postdoctoral mentor at Scripps Research Institute in San Diego to the same disease. “What is the probability of having three mentors get the same cancer and die before you graduate?” he asked.
Despite these personal and professional setbacks, Dr. Velazquez Villarreal earned a medical degree with honors and went on to complete a clinical fellowship at Harvard Medical School’s Department of Surgery. He then received a certificate in global health, a master’s in public health, a master’s in epidemiology and a doctorate in human genetics and bioinformatics, all from the University of Pittsburgh. He conducted his dissertation project at the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center utilizing BlackLight, the largest memory-based supercomputer at the time, managing and analyzing 100 million electronic health records. The project showcased his expertise in large-scale data integration and computational research. After completing two postdoctoral fellowships at the Scripps Research Institute and Rady Childrens Hospital, he held faculty positions at San Diego State University (SDSU) and the University of Southern California.
Reaching for the Moon
Dr. Velazquez Villarreal joined City of Hope in 2023, bringing along innovative studies that include the development of computational protocols for single-cell multiomics sequencing, a new and advanced approach to biology that looks at multiple aspects of a cell — like proteins, molecules and DNA — to gain deeper insights into how the cell functions. He aims to molecularly characterize colorectal cancer tissues and integrate clinical data with multiomics and artificial intelligence (AI) to predict the most beneficial treatment for patients through individual analyses.
As a co-investigator on the National Institutes of Health (NIH)-National Cancer Institute Colorectal Cancer Disparities Moonshot project, Dr. Velazquez Villarreal is working to address colorectal cancer disparities within Hispanic and Latino communities. In this capacity, he and his lab members are collaborating with researchers on tumor sequencing and molecular profiling, contributing to a broader understanding of the disease in diverse populations. His ultimate goal is to create targeted therapies for Hispanics and Latinos.
“The Moonshot is a big project with millions of dollars just for Hispanic and Latino populations looking at all the different components in the evolution of the tumor and potential for targeted medications,” said Dr. Velazquez Villarreal. “It will increase the representation of these populations in cancer databases, which is like a dream come true for me.”
A Focus on Precision
In addition to the NIH Moonshot project, Dr. Velazquez Villarreal has multiple grants to develop precision medicine approaches for several other types of cancers, including pancreatic, endometrial, ovarian, breast, melanoma, brain and prostate cancers. He’s using AI/machine learning and other tools from a wide range of fields, including bioinformatics, statistics, genetics, epidemiology, clinical medicine, and public and global health data, to help develop molecularly informed treatment recommendations.
For his work using leading-edge technologies to unravel cancer health disparities within diverse populations at the molecular level, Dr. Velazquez Villarreal was named a 2024 American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Minority and Minority-Serving Institution Faculty Scholar in Cancer Research. The award provides funds for minority faculty engaged in meritorious research to participate in the AACR annual meeting.
And it’s not just cancer that Dr. Velazquez Villarreal is investigating. He is also involved in an NIH grant-funded study for which he is sequencing and molecularly characterizing tissues from patients with Alzheimer's in the Mexican state of Jalisco.
“These endeavors underscore our commitment to advancing translational research and precision medicine initiatives across diverse health care contexts and populations,” he said.
But his main research driver remains figuring out the disease that killed so many people who had a positive impact on his career.
“I'm basically growing my lab focusing on Hispanic and Latinos in colorectal cancer for my mentors,” said Dr. Velazquez Villarreal. “I want to explore the role of AI in enhancing cancer diagnosis and care for these communities. Young Latinos here in Los Angeles are experiencing higher levels of colorectal cancer. Something is happening, so I’m working to generate the data to understand why and develop intervention studies to help directly.”