Geoff Macintyre – Group leader
Geoff Macintyre is a junior group leader at the Spanish National Cancer Institute (CNIO). He has a B. Sc. (Genetics), B. Comp. Sci, M. Comp. Sci. and PhD in Computational Biology. Prior to joining CNIO Geoff spent five years at the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute, University of Cambridge, developing computational approaches to quantify different types of chromosomal instability.
Patricia G Santamaria – Senior Staff Scientist
Patricia leads the experimental work in the Computational Oncology Lab. She is a senior scientist with extensive research and academic background in molecular oncology, cellular biology and biochemistry, with experience in recognized research centres in the US and Spain. Her research is aimed at identifying and characterizing novel players involved in the molecular mechanisms responsible for tumor progression, with a particular interest in drug discovery within the biomedical area. Patricia is driven to scientific knowledge and innovation, keen to contribute to discoveries in biomedical cancer research and expand innovation-based cancer treatments. She is also actively involved in outreaching and science communication activities aimed at specialized and lay audiences.
Barbara Hernando – Computational postdoc – la Caixa Junior Leader
Barbara is a computational postdoc in the Computational Oncology Group. Her career switched from wet to dry lab by performing a postdoctoral international stay at the Cancer Genome Evolution Research Group at UCL Cancer Institute. Barbara is interested in tackling the mutational processes that cause tumours to develop and resist therapies. Barbara aims to develop computational approaches that can be exploited for early detection and personalised therapy decisions.
Marina Torres – Computational postdoc
Marina is interested in developing mathematical and computational models to understand evolutionary processes affecting cell populations in a tumour, with a particular interest in implementing the effects of chromosomal instability in such models. Her goal in the lab is to extend methods commonly used in evolutionary theory (phylogeny reconstruction, evolution simulations, branching processes), to populations where chromosomal instability affects the selective advantage of cells. She has a Master’s Degree in Biophysics and a PhD in Theoretical Soft Matter Physics (University of Paris-Saclay).
Maria Escobar – PhD student – FPI
María is focused on providing new understanding of how normal cells develop extreme chromosomal instability (CIN) and progress to aggressive, difficult-to-treat cancer. By applying single cell genomic techniques, she is aiming to detect ongoing CIN from FFPE premalignant tissue and stop it before it confers any selective advantage in the cell and results in a clonal expansion. She will use tumour organoid models for exploring the efficacy of new targeted therapies in order to find out if they are able to stop the associated ongoing CIN. Therefore, her project is aimed to have an impact beyond early diagnosis and opens a window for preventive, therapeutic intervention.
Blas Chaves Urbano – PhD student – la Caixa retaining
Blas is interested in identifying new therapeutic targets for tackling cancers with CIN, a typical hallmark in the most aggressive tumours. In collaboration with multiple groups at CNIO, he is performing single-cell genomic characterisation of a collection of CIN-models which have induced CIN through CRISPR knock-out of key DNA damage response and cell cycle genes. Using these data he will provide in-depth insight into the mechanisms underlying different types of CIN and propose new synthetic lethal therapeutic strategies to tackle these cancers.
David Gomez-Sanchez – PhD student
David is a PhD student at the Computational Oncology Group who also provides bioinformatics support to the H12O-CNIO Lung Cancer Unit. His thesis project is focused on deciphering mechanisms of CIN and its impact in lung cancer, the world’s deadliest cancer, using signature-based biomarkers detected in our own collection of clinical samples and preclinical models with several lung cancer subtypes.
Ángel Fernández Sanromán – PhD Student – la Caixa retaining
Ángel aims to describe how mutational processes leading to the accumulation of somatic copy number alterations change across tumour evolution. He works in modifying our published method to detect copy number signature exposures so that it offers a spatio-temporal resolution of the activity of different mutational processes. The ultimate goal of his project is to understand if the activation of certain mutational processes represents a landmark event in tumour evolution that unleashes the high levels of chromosomal instability that are observed in many advanced tumour types. Ángel believes that conserved patterns in the changes of these mutational processes could help to forecast the future evolution of the tumour of a patient and prevent future accumulation of chromosomal instability given genomic data from one tumour biopsy.
Joe Thompson – PhD Student – la Caixa incoming
Joe’s work involves developing biomarkers based on patterns of chromosomal instability that can predict response to cancer treatments. To improve the translational potential of these complex computational biomarkers, he is developing regulatory guidance that aims to help researchers navigate the biomarker validation and clinical approval pathways. Joe has a background in bioinformatics and software engineering developed over the past 7 years across both academia and industry. Through this background he is especially interested in the importance of translational medicine for ensuring that the results of academic research are made available to patients in the clinic.
Alice Cadiz – Lab technician
Alice maintains the organisation of the lab and provides help and support for all projects when it’s needed.
Alumni
Maria Garcia Perez – Senior Staff Scientist 2020-2023 (now group leader at CSIC)
Agustin Sanchez – Masters student 2020 (now PhD at VHIO)
Diego Garcia – Masters student 2022 (now Research Scientist at Tailor Bio)