May 22, 2007 8:00 AM

A mentor to minorities

Manuel Penichet, an assistant professor of medicine and immunology at UCLA, is committed to finding new treatments that would stimulate the body's immune system to act on its own and combat cancerous cells.

But the Cuba native also is passionate about another cause: motivating students from populations that are underrepresented in the sciences, such as Chicanos, to pursue careers in medical research.

Penichet is convinced that students from any economic and ethnic background can succeed if they are committed to research and receive appropriate guidance and support working in a laboratory.

"I tell them, 'If you were to win the lottery, would you still be doing this work?'" Penichet said. "If the answer is no, run away — do different things. This is a lot of work, so you have to love this and be committed to doing this every day."

Penichet's mentoring has paid off. Students working in his laboratory have garnered fellowships, published articles in leading medical journals and gained admission to graduate school.

"Dr. Penichet knows the value of mentoring people and where people are coming from," said Jose Rodriguez, a biophysics major who is graduating in June with several published articles and a column in the journal Nature under his belt. Rodriguez will start graduate studies in molecular biology this fall at UCLA under the tutelage of Penichet.

"Dr. Penichet has been amazing in his dedication and concern for undergraduate student researchers," said Elma Gonzalez, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and director of the Minority Access to Research Careers program, through which Penichet has mentored two students.

Penichet's research involves concentrating molecules that stimulate the immune system in the tumor environment, thus training the immune system to recognize cancer cells as foreign and destroy them.

Already, Penichet has developed a new generation of antibodies capable of targeting and destroying cancer cells and awakening the immune response. He hopes to take this discovery to clinical trials in coming years.

Penichet, who holds an M.D. and a doctorate in biochemistry from the Havana Advanced Institute of Medical Sciences, worked on the development of a recombinant vaccine against cattle ticks in Cuba. Since then, it has been marketed and used internationally.

In 1993, Penichet left Cuba to conduct research as a postdoctoral fellow with the Institute of Genetic Biochemistry and Evolution in Pavia, Italy. He came to UCLA in 1996 as a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Molecular Genetics under the mentorship of Professor Sherie Morrison.

In addition to his success at mentoring students, Penichet is frequently invited to serve as a keynote speaker at international meetings and institutions. He has published in such prestigious medical journals as Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, U.S.A., and has served as a consultant to the National Cancer Institute to implement a strategy to reduce the health disparities in cancer treatment between minority populations and other ethnic groups in the United States.

What motivates him, Penichet said, is "contributing to human knowledge and finding a possible solution to devastating diseases such as cancer."

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