PEBC Report - Programa de Epigenética y Biología del Cáncer

Dr Puri Muñoz
Aging and Cancer Group
Purificación Muñoz Moruno was born in L’Hospitalet de
Llobregat, Barcelona in 1965. She graduated in Biology
from the Universidad de Barcelona in 1988, where she
also obtained her Ph.D. in Biology under the supervision
of Dr. Antonio Zorzano Olarte. During her Ph.D. training
she focused her studies on the characterization of the
translocation of insulin-induced glucose transporters in
skeletal muscle.
In order to investigate different aspects of DNA repair and cell
cycle control, she joined the laboratories of Dr. Jean Marie
Blanchard and Dr. Jacques Piette at the Institut de Génétique
Moleculaire de Montpellier (France) as a postdoctoral fellow
in May 1995. In 1999, she returned to Barcelona to join Dr.
José Luis Rosa’s laboratory in the Medical School of
Barcelona from Universidad de Barcelona where her
research work contributed to the analysis of p532 role in
intracellular vesicular trafficking and cellular proliferation.
In 2002 she obtained a Research Contract from the “Ramón
y Cajal” Program and joined the laboratory of Dra. Maria A.
Blasco at CNIO (Madrid). There, her research interests
focused on the role of DNA repair and homologous recombination
proteins in telomere function and chromosomal stability.
She also generated different mouse models to evaluate
the role of telomere binding proteins in telomere function
and genome stability. Her studies revealed a genetic interaction
between telomeres and the nucleotide excision repair
machinery, which underlies susceptibility to cancer and
aging. Her scientific achievements have given arise to several
publications in high impact international journals. Since
June 2007, Dra. Muñoz is leader of the Aging and Cancer
Group of the Cancer Epigenetic and Biology Program of
Bellvitge Institute for Biomedical Research (IDIBELL) in
Barcelona. Her current research is focused on studying
genetic and epigenetic changes in adult stem cells during
aging and cancer.
Research interests
The function of epidermal stem cells is essential for the
maintenance of skin homeostasis. In contrast to keratinocytes
of the epidermis that are continuously renewed,
the stem cells are present in the skin during all the life of the
organism. The continuous exposure of the epidermal stem
cells to genotoxic agents during long periods of time makes
these cells susceptible to accumulate mutations and DNA
lesions, which in turn could compromise their function
PhD Students: Diana Riba Artés, Maria Victoria da Silva Diz
Technician: Maria Urpi Castany
regenerating the skin. The incidence of skin tumors (non
melanomas) in human increases with age and several studies
indicate that these tumors could be generated from epidermal
stem/progenitors cells. Our studies are focused on
characterizing genetic and epigenetic changes in epidermal
stem cells in aging and genetic identifying alterations
responsible of loss of stem cell function and transformation
of these cells in tumor initiating cells. Tumor initiating cells
are a subpopulation of tumor cells that has been identified
in some solid tumors as being responsible for tumor growth
and distal metastasis. They show also more resistance to
anti-tumoral treatments, suggesting that this tumor cell population
can play a relevant role in relapsing tumor growth
after chemotherapy. We will use different mouse models to
isolate adult stem/progenitors cells and tumor initiating cells
from normal skin and skin carcinomas. We are also interested
in investigating the involvement of this population of
tumor cells in the response to chemotherapy in human colorectal
carcinomas.
45