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.
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.
- Santanach A, Blanco E, Jiang H, Molloy KR, Sanso M, LaCava J, Morey L & Di Croce L 2017, 'The Polycomb group protein CBX6 is an essential regulator of embryonic stem cell identity', Nature Communications, 8, 1235.
- Pascual G, Avgustinova A, Mejetta S, Martín M, Castellanos A, Stephan-Otto Attolini C, Berenguer A, Prats N, Toll A, Hueto JA, Bescós C, Di Croce L & Aznar-Benitah S 2017, 'Targeting metastasis stem cells through the fatty acid receptor CD36', Nature, 541, 41–45.
- Hu D, Gao X, Cao K, Morgan MA, Mas G, Smith ER, Volk AG, Bartom ET, Crispino JD, Di Croce L & Shilatifard A 2017, 'Not All H3K4 Methylations Are Created Equal: Mll2/COMPASS Dependency in Primordial Germ Cell Specification', Mol Cell, 65:460-475.
- Stevens TJ, Lando D, Basu S, Atkinson LP, Cao Y, Lee SF, Leeb M, Wohlfahrt KJ, Boucher W, O'Shaughnessy-Kirwan A, Cramard J, Faure AJ, Ralser M, Blanco E, Morey L, Sanso M, Palayret MGS, Lehner B, Di Croce L, Wutz A, Hendrich B, Klenerman D & Laue ED 2017, '3D structures of individual mammalian genomes studied by single-cell Hi-C', Nature, 544, 7648, 59 - +.
- Schuettengruber B, Bourbon H-M, Di Croce L & Cavalli G 2017, 'Genome Regulation by Polycomb and Trithorax: 70 Years and Counting', Cell, 171, 1, 34 - 57.
Organizer of several international conferences, including for 2017: Epigenetics in Clinical and Translational Research, Helsinki (Finland), and CRISPR/Cas9Tool: From Gene to function, Barcelona
Since 2015: co-organizer of the "The Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology" (BIST) Master school
Since 2014, co-organizer of the Cold Spring Harbour Laboratories Summer course on "Chromatin, Epigenetics and Transcription"
Since 2012 Chair of the Graduate Programme at CRG
ERC Panel Member for 2016-2019
EMBO Member (since 2013)