Professional Bio
Claudia Gonzalez-Hunt, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the Division of Genetic Medicine and Clinical Pharmacology within the Department of Medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Her primary research interests lie in understanding the role of genome integrity and the DNA damage response in neurodegenerative disease pathogenesis.
Dr. Gonzalez-Hunt utilizes multi-disciplinary approaches to understand the causes and consequences of dysregulated genome maintenance in the brain, integrating her expertise in cell biology, neuroscience, toxicology, and omics technologies. Her research program applies single cell and spatial transcriptomics to investigate how unrepaired DNA damage can initiate or potentiate pathological phenotypes in neurodegenerative disease, such as inflammation, cell cycle dysregulation, and cell death pathway activation.
She is interested in understanding how somatic mutagenesis caused by DNA damage can contribute to neuronal cell death and disease. Her research also investigates how mutagenic and transcriptomic signatures can differ across the neurodegenerative disease spectrum, with the goal of contributing to better disease categorization and patient stratification.
Dr. Gonzalez-Hunt received her bachelor's degree in Biology from Henderson State University, and her doctorate degree in Toxicology from Duke University under the mentorship of Joel Meyer, PhD. She performed her postdoctoral training in the Department of Neurology at Duke University under the mentorship of Laurie Sanders, PhD.
Education
PhD - Duke University, 2017
Fellowship - Postdoctoral training, Neurology - Duke University, 2024
Contact
Email
Kimryn.Rathmell@Vumc.Org
Address
777 Preston Research Building
2220 Pierce Ave
Nashville, TN 37232-6307