Diego Altomare is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Biomedical Sciences at the University of South Carolina School of Medicine.  Diego received a Bachelor-MS in Biochemistry at the Universidad Nacional de Rosario, Argentina - School of Biochemical and Pharmaceutical Sciences.  Diego’s role in the Carolina Women Care Study is to investigate gene expression profiles of exfoliated cervical cells using microarray technology.  Gene expression profiles are determined using microarrays containing 1073 different genes that were designed and printed at the South Carolina Cancer Center Microarray Core Facility.  RNA is isolated from exfoliated cervical cells in Pap samples collected from study participants.  This RNA is then amplified, labeled, and hybridized to the custom microarrays.  The microarray data generated from study samples is then analyzed to obtain expression information for the 1073 genes spotted on the custom arrays.  The aim of these experiments is to use gene expression profiles to differentiate women that have a persistent HPV infection from women with a transient infection.  Determination of expression profiles unique to women with persistent HPV infection has clinical implications and may result in improvement of treatment and follow up of patients.