Associate Professor of Anatomy and Cellular Biology
Tufts University School of Medicine

Dr. Kuperwasser received her BA and PhD degrees from the University of Massachusetts and her postdoctoral training in breast cancer development at the Whitehead Institute at MIT in the laboratory of Dr. Robert Weinberg, a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and winner of the National Medal of Science. Dr. Kuperwasser is an internationally recognized researcher with expertise in the biology of cancer stem cells, the cell subset likely responsible for cancer relapses and ultimately death, and in the role of the tumor microenvironment in malignant cell growth. She pioneered the development of a unique and enormously powerful mouse model in which discarded normal human breast cells are transplanted into the mammary glands of mice to study how these normal cells influence outgrowth of cancerous cells.