In 2000, when she was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to travel from Colombia to study genetic engineering at the University of Arkansas, Dr. Magnolia Ariza-Nieto says she thought she had won the lottery. But with that elation came a sense of responsibility. “When you are on a Fulbright scholarship, you feel you have a moral imperative to pay something back for the benefit of mankind,” she says.
Now, thanks to Dr. Shubha Ghosh, and the Syracuse University College of Law Technology and Commercialization Law Center (TCLC) that he leads as Director, Ariza-Nieto is poised to put her more than 35 years of discovery to practical use with the creation of a diagnostic epigentic kit and complementary precision medicine service that she calls epiWELL.
“epiWELL is a diagnostic kit for healthcare providers to monitor changes in a person’s epigenome, to help with prevention and treatment strategies for a host of diseases, including obesity, Type 2 Diabetes, and Alzheimer’s disease,” explains Ariza-Nieto. “Epigenetics is concerned with the function of genes and their role in metabolic disorders. In my opinion, even aging can be considered an epigenetic disease. When people who are aging well say ‘I have good genes,’ they are essentially correct. In aging, some genes are getting turned off and some turned on, causing the diseases of old age. Having a diagnostic kit to prevent these comorbidities is greatly desired.”
Ariza-Nieto’s path from molecular biologist and genetic engineer to
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