Biography

Bojana Gligorijevic, PhD, graduated Chemistry at University of Belgrade with an honors thesis in analytical chemistry. At Georgetown University, Dr. Gligorijevic’s PhD in chemistry took a turn when she first saw a fluorescent microscope. She ended up with a thesis on development of high-resolution 4D spinning disc microscopy tools for studying malaria parasite metabolism. During her postdoctoral training in cancer biology at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, she continued developing new tools. At the time, she started focusing on intravital imaging in breast cancer mouse models and contributed to the current view of metastatic cascade mechanism in the tumor context. She discovered that invadopodia, tumor cell structures which make holes in the connective tissue, form around blood vessels. By forming holes, invadopodia help cancer cells enter into the blood vessels, causing future metastasis. During her time at Temple, she has been teaching microscopy course called Biophotonics. She is continuing her work on tools, and is collaborating with Fox Chase Cancer Center on developing prognostic markers to stratify breast cancer patients into High- and Low- risk for future metastases. She is currently working on the question how sensory neurons affect invadopodia and metastasis in breast cancer.