Campus Directory

Division Physical & Biological Sciences Division

Department/College/Unit Chemistry & Biochemistry Department

Title Professor

Affiliation Faculty

Faculty Type Regular Faculty

Areas of Expertise Chemistry

Web Site

Primary Office Location Physical Sciences Building
PSB 344

Additional Location(s) PSB 353
PSB 359

Mail Stop Chemistry

Biography, Education and Training

2003 - 2007       B.A. in Chemistry, Whitman College

2007 - 2012       PhD in Chemistry and Biochemistry, UCSC (with Roger Linington)

2012 - 2015       NIH K12 IRACDA Postdoc Fellow - UCSD (with Pieter Dorrestein)

She started her independent lab in the Fall of 2015 at the University of Illinois at Chicago in the Department of Pharmaceutical sciences. The lab relocated to the University of California, Santa Cruz Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry in January 2021. Her team specializes in using and adapting imaging mass spectrometry and tandem mass spectrometry for small molecule analyses in complex systems. She was a K12 BIRCWH Scholar (2016-2017) which supported the translation of the techniques to women's health. 

Summary of Expertise

Mass spectrometry, small molecule communication, natural products, microbial communities, cancer 

Selected Publications

Lusk HJ, Haughan M, Bergsten TM, Burdette JE, Sanchez LM. “Branched-chain amino acid catabolism promotes ovarian cancer cell proliferation via phosphorylation of mTOR.” Cancer Research Communications, 2025, 5(4):569-579.

Shepherd RA, Fihn CA, Tabag AJ, McKinnie SMK, Sanchez LM. “‘Need for Speed: High Throughput’– Mass spectrometry approaches for high-throughput directed evolution screening of natural product enzymes.” Natural Product Reports, 2025, ASAP.

McAtamney A, Ferranti A, Ludvik D, Yildiz FH, Mandel MJ, Hayward T, Sanchez LM. “Microbial metabolomics’ latest SICRIT: Soft ionization by Chemical Reaction in-Transfer mass spectrometry.” Journal of the American Society for Mass Spectrometry, 2024, 35, 12, 3049-3056.

Bergsten TM, Lusk HJ, Haughan M, Guerrero JA, Levy SE, Lantvit DD, Sanchez LM, Burdette JE. "Fallopian tube derived high grade serous cancers influence ovarian production of norepinephrine and generate specific metabolomic signatures.” ACS Pharmacology & Translational Science, 2024, 7, 7, 2185-2195.

McCaughey  CS, Trebino MA, McAtamney A, Isenberg R, Mandel MJ,  Yildiz FH, Sanchez LM. “A label-free approach for relative spatial quantitation of c-di-GMP in microbial biofilms.” Analytical Chemistry, 2024, 96(21):8308-8316.

Chadha R, Guerrero JA, Wei L, Sanchez LM. “Seeing is believing: developing multimodal metabolic insights at the molecular level.” ACS Central Science, 2024,10(4):758-774.

Courses Chem 272
Chem 124
Chem 292
Chem 230