Anastasia-Maria Zavitsanou
Anastasia, originally from Greece and currently residing in New York City, is studying the the role of somatosensory and viscerosensory circuits in pleasure and pain.
As an undergraduate at Imperial College in London, she worked in the laboratory of Dr. Nadia Guerra studying the role of the NKG2D immunoreceptor in promoting liver cancer, a project that consolidated her interest in tumor immunology. While an undergraduate student, she spent a summer working at the lab of Dr. Bob Weinberg at Whitehead Institute at MIT investigating epithelial-mesenchymal transitions in breast cancer.
After earning her Bachelor of Science (B.Sc.) in biochemistry in 2016, she pursued graduate studies in Immunology at NYU School of Medicine. As a doctoral student, she studied how tumor intrinsic mutations in lung adenocarcinoma alter anti-tumor immunity and impact responses to immunotherapy. She used genetically engineered mouse models that closely mimic the mutational landscape of human malignancies and established a novel immunogenic orthotopic model of lung cancer. Her work revealed that lung tumors with hyperactive antioxidant pathway suppress the DC-T cell anti-tumor axis and uncovered a novel treatment regimen to sensitize recalcitrant lung cancers to immunotherapy, offering hope for a substantial number of lung cancer patients.
Throughout her Ph.D., she was intrigued by the finding that cancer patients experience symptoms such as pain, anorexia, sleep and mood changes. For her postdoctoral training, she followed her curiosity and switched to an entirely new research field to tackle the fundamental question of how cancer alters behavior via dysregulation our internal sensory system. She is a postdoctoral research scientist in the laboratory of Dr. Ishmail Abdus-Saboor in the Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute at Columbia University. Using mouse models of lung cancer, systems neuroscience approaches and computational tools for behavioral quantification, Anastasia is dissecting how signals from the tumor microenvironment alter periphery-to-brain circuits to drive cancer-induced visceral pain. Her research is generously funded by the Simons Foundation as part of the Junior Fellows program.
In addition to her work on cancer visceral pain, Anastasia leads a research program exploring sexual pleasure. What makes genital self-stimulation (masturbation) rewarding? To answer this question, she developed the first device permitting the study of genital self-stimulation in female mice. She combines electrical engineering, computational tools and transgenic mice to understand how different stimuli affect neural circuits from the periphery to the brain. The study of human pleasure is an essential but often neglected area of scientific research, primarily due to its historical association with taboo and societal discomfort. She believes it is imperative to pursue open discussions surrounding human sexuality and contribute to the normalization of open conversations about sexual health and relationships.
Anastasia is also deeply passionate about science communication and making complex scientific concepts accessible to the public. She frequently collaborates with talented artists and filmmakers aiming to produce work that educates, intrigues, and sparks meaningful conversations. Her work has been featured at the 2023 Science New Wave Festival XVI in New York, 2024 Brain Awareness Week and she recently spoke at the National Jazz Museum in Harlem about the interplay of auditory and tactile perception.
Outside the lab, she loves spending time outdoors, hiking with her family, and sailing in the Mediterranean Sea. She is also a sky diver and an avid skier. On rainy days, she can be found on her sofa with a perfectly brewed cappuccino and a great book.