Victor H. Villar

Dr. Victor H. Villar is a Research Fellow specializing in liquid biopsy and biomarker development at the University of St Andrews' School of Medicine. He directs the Metabolism and Biomarkers Lab within the Sir James Mackenzie Institute for Early Diagnosis, focusing on metabolic vulnerabilities in hepatobiliary cancers and sarcomas.

Research pillars:

• LC-MS metabolomics for biomarker discovery
• Glutamine pathway dysregulation in malignancies
• Ferroptosis resistance mechanisms
• Mitochondrial metabolism in tumor-stroma interactions

Publications demonstrate methodological innovations in metabolic flux analysis and multimodal biomarker validation, with recent work revealing novel connections between selenium metabolism and metastasis. Supervises doctoral candidates developing subtype-specific biomarkers for soft tissue sarcoma and hepatocellular carcinoma.