Dr. Karen Sandell Sfanos is an Associate Professor of Pathology, Oncology, and Urology at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, The Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins, and The Brady Urological Research Institute. She earned a Bachelor's and a Master's degree at the Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne, FL and a Ph.D. from the Cellular and Molecular Medicine graduate program at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, MD. Dr. Sfanos completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Pathology at Johns Hopkins before joining the faculty in 2011. The Sfanos laboratory studies the influence that the human microbiome, prostate infections, and chronic inflammation may have on prostatic disease. Ongoing studies in the lab focus on inflammatory factors in the prostate tumor microenvironment and the influence of the microbiome (both gastrointestinal and genitourinary) on prostate cancer development, progression, and/or resistance to therapy.