Luciano Di Croce

Luciano Di Croce

Centre de Regulació Genòmica

Life & Medical Sciences

1996 PhD Dept. Cellular and Developmental Biology, University of Rome, Italy. 1996-2000 Postdoctoral work at the University of Marburg, Germany. 2000-2002 Senior Investigator at the European Institute of Oncology, Milan, Italy. 2003 Group Leader at the Centre de Regulació Genòmica (CRG), Barcelona, Spain. Research Professor, Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats (ICREA). 2013 Elected EMBO Member. Luciano Di Croce is the coordinator of a new Marie Curie ITN project entitled “Chromatin architecture and Design – ChromDesign” (GA 813327) granted by the European Commission’s H2020-MSCA-ITN-2018 program.

Research interests

Epigenetic changes, such as histone modifications and DNA methylation, are common alterations in cancer cells. Our laboratory is addressing the molecular basis of epigenetic alterations during the early phase of the tumorigenesis process. The expression of onco-proteins in hematopoietic precursor cells provides a unique model system to follow the molecular step from a normal to a transformed cell on the level of gene transcription, nuclear structure and chromatin. More recently, Di Croce lab is interested in understanding how variations in the assembly of the Polycomb complexes occur and influence mES cell differentiation and animal development, and th erole of ‘oncohistone’ in pediatric cancers.

Selected publications

– Sparavier A & Di Croce L 2022, ‘Polycomb complexes in MLL-AF9-related leukemias‘, Current Opinion In Genetics & Development, 75, 101920.

– Aranda S, Condemi L & Di Croce L 2022, ‘PRC2 shields the potency of human stem cells‘, Nature Cell Biology, 6, 806-808.

– Mas G, Santoro F, Blanco E, Gamarra Figueroa GP, Le Dily F, Frigè G, Vidal E, Mugianesi F, Ballaré C, Gutierrez A, Sparavier A, Marti-Renom MA, Minucci S & Di Croce L 2022, ‘In vivo temporal resolution of acute promyelocytic leukemia progression reveals a role of Klf4 in suppressing early leukemic transformation‘, Genes Dev, 36, 451-467.

Di Croce L & Skok J 2022, ‘Understanding the biology of cancer genomes in the context of DNA, RNA, histone marks, and 3D chromatin organization’, Curr Opin Genet Dev, 77:102001.

– García-Eguren G, González-Ramírez M, Vizán P, Giró O, Vega-Beyhart A, Boswell L, Mora M, Halperin I, Carmona F, Gracia M, Casals G, Squarcia M, Enseñat J, Vidal O, Di Croce L & Hanzu FA 2022 ‘Glucocorticoid-induced Fingerprints on Visceral Adipose Tissue Transcriptome and Epigenome’, J Clin Endocrinol Metab, 107(1):150-166.