Xavier Trepat

Institut de Bioenginyeria de Catalunya (IBEC)

Engineering Sciences

Xavier Trepat received a BSc in Physics in 2000 and a BSc in Engineering in 2001. In 2004 he obtained his PhD from the Medical School at the University of Barcelona. He then joined the Program in Molecular and Integrative Physiological Sciences at Harvard University as a postdoctoral researcher. In 2008 he became a "Ramón y Cajal" researcher at the University of Barcelona and in January 2011 an ICREA Research Professor at the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC). He is Group Leader of the Integrative Cell and Tissue Dynamics research line at IBEC. In 2015 he won the Banc de Sabadell Award for Biomedical Research.


Research interests

The ability of eukaryotic cells to migrate within living organisms underlies a wide range of phenomena in health and disease. When properly regulated, cell migration enables morphogenesis, host defense, and tissue healing. When regulation fails, however, cell migration mediates devastating pathologies such as cancer, vascular disease and chronic inflammation. Our research focuses in understanding the fundamental biophysical mechanisms underlying migration both at the single cell level and at the tissue level. To this aim, we develop novel technologies to measure nanoscale inter- and intra-cellular forces.

Selected publications

– Sunyer R, Conte V, Escribano J, Elosegui-Artola A, Labernadie A, Valon L, Navajas D, Garcia-Aznar, JM, Munoz JJ, Roca-Cusachs P & Trepat X 2016, ‘Collective cell durotaxis emerges from long-range intercellular force transmission’, Science, 353, 6304, 1157 – 1161.

– Elosegui-Artola A, Oria R, Chen Y, Kosmalska A, Perez-Gonzalez C, Castro N, Zhu C, Trepat X & Roca-Cusachs P 2016, ‘Mechanical regulation of a molecular clutch defines force transmission and transduction in response to matrix rigidity’, Nature Cell Biology, 18, 5, 540-8.

– Ladoux B, Mege R & Trepat X 2016, ‘Front-Rear Polarization by Mechanical Cues: From Sincle Cells to Tissues’, Trends In Cell Biology, 26, 6, 420 – 433.

– Tekeli I, Aujard I, Trepat X, Jullien L, Raya A & Zalvidea D 2016, ‘Long-term in vivo single-cell lineage tracing of deep structures using three-photon activation’, Light-science & Applications, 5, e16084.

– Alencar AM, Ferraz MSA, Park CY, Millet E, Trepat X, Fredberg JJ & Butler JP 2016, ‘Non-equilibrium cytoquake dynamics in cytoskeletal remodeling and stabilization’, Soft Matter, 12, 41, 8506 – 8511.

– Przybyla L, Lakins JN, Sunyer R, Trepat X & Weaver VM 2016, ‘Monitoring developmental force distributions in reconstituted embryonic epithelia’, Methods, 94, 101 – 113.

– Asadipour N, Trepat X & Muñoz JJ 2016, ‘Porous-based rheological model for tissue fluidisation’, Journal of the Mechanics and Physics of Solids, 96: 535-549.