Rate My Professor Amina Mohammadalipour

Amina Mohammadalipour, Ph.D., serves as Assistant Professor in the Physics Department at Saint Louis University. She earned her Ph.D. from Ohio University in 2015, where her dissertation examined the mechanical properties of cancer cells as a possible biomarker for stemness under the advisement of David Tees in the Physics & Astronomy Department. Prior to her current position, Mohammadalipour held a senior postdoctoral fellowship in the Wenzel Lab, focusing on mesenchymal stromal cells and their therapeutic applications. Her career trajectory reflects a commitment to interdisciplinary research bridging physics and biology, particularly in cellular mechanics and cancer biology.

Mohammadalipour's research centers on the biophysical aspects of carcinogenesis, from initiation and growth to progression and metastasis. Her investigations explore mechanical properties of cancer cells as biomarkers for stemness, deformability of cancer stem cells correlated with invasiveness, and cancer stem cells' cytoskeleton rearrangements and interactions with the microenvironment. This work seeks to uncover biophysical-driven cellular and subcellular functions regulating tumor invasion, contributing to drug discovery and therapeutic innovations. Notable publications include: "Cholesterol depletion decreases adhesion of non-small cell lung cancer cells to E-selectin" (American Journal of Physiology-Cell Physiology, 2023); "RhoA-ROCK competes with YAP to regulate amoeboid breast cancer cell migration in response to lymphatic-like flow" (FASEB BioAdvances, 2022); "Mitochondrial transfer and regulators of mesenchymal stromal cell function" (Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology, 2020); "Bone marrow stromal cell therapy improves survival after radiation injury but does not restore endogenous hematopoiesis" (Scientific Reports, 2020); "Deformability of breast cancer cells in correlation with surface markers and cell rolling" (The FASEB Journal, 2018); "Galectin-1 influences breast cancer cell adhesion to E-selectin via ligand intermediaries" (Cellular and Molecular Bioengineering, 2017); and "Viscoelasticity measurements reveal rheological differences between stem-like and non-stem-like breast cancer cells" (Cellular and Molecular Bioengineering, 2017). These contributions have advanced understanding of cancer cell adhesion, migration, and stromal interactions.