Mentor - Manuela Orjuela-Grimm, MD, ScM

Manuela A. Orjuela, MD, ScM is a pediatric hematologist-oncologist who specializes in the treatment of post-transplant lymphoprofilerative disease (PTLD) arising after a solid organ transplant (heart, liver, lung, or kidney). She also has experience caring for children with brain tumors.

Dr. Orjuela finds this field to be intellectually stimulating, as it is a very rich experience to be able to help a family during a challenging time and be able to make a difference in their lives using advances made in the treatment of childhood cancers.

During her career, Dr. Orjuela has also had the privilege of caring for people with cancers in other countries, which has afforded her a different perspective and helped her to appreciate the wealth of healthcare services in the United States. She speaks Spanish, French, Italian, and German, which has enabled her to communicate with patients from different cultures and countries.

Dr. Orjuela is also devoted to conducting research to learn more about the causes of pediatric cancers. She finds research to be intellectually fascinating, and identifies defects that occur during fetal development that may lead to pediatric cancer. She is trained as a molecular epidemiologist, and studies the combined influence of early-life exposures and genetic susceptibility on a child's cancer risk. Her interest is in "teasing out" the complexities of exposure to potential environmental carcinogens during critical windows of a child's development to learn more about the genetic factors that may lead to pediatric cancers.