Xavier Trepat

Institut de Bioenginyeria de Catalunya

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

We aim at understanding how physical forces and molecular control modules cooperate to drive biological function. We develop new technologies to map and perturb the main physical properties that determine how cells and tissues grow, move, invade and remodel. By combining this physical information with systematic molecular perturbations and computational models we explore the principles that govern the interplay between chemical and physical cues in living tissues. We study how these principles are regulated in physiology and development, and how they are derailed in cancer and aging.

Selected publications

- Arroyo M & Trepat X 2017, 'Hydraulic fracturing in cells and tissues: fracking meets cell biology', Curr Opin Cell Biol, vol. 44, pp 1-6. 

- Labernadie A, Kato T, Brugués A, Serra-Picamal X, Derzsi S, Arwert E, Weston A, González-Tarragó V, Elosegui-Artola A, Albertazzi L, Alcaraz J, Roca-Cusachs P, Sahai E & Trepat X 2017, 'A mechanically active heterotypic E-cadherin/N-cadherin adhesion enables fibroblasts to drive cancer cell invasion', Nat Cell Biol, vol. 19 no. 3, pp 224-237.  

- Rodriguez-Franco P, Brugues A, Marin-Llaurado A, Conte V, Solanas G, Batlle E, Fredberg JJ, Roca-Cusachs P, Sunyer R & Trepat X 2017, 'Long-lived force patterns and deformation waves at repulsive epithelial boundaries', Nat Mater, 16, 1029-1037.

- Valon L, Marín-Llauradó A, Wyatt T, Charras G & Trepat X 2017, 'Optogenetic control of cellular forces and mechanotransduction', Nat Comm, vol 10, no 8, pp 14396.

- Roca-Cusachs P, Conte V & Trepat X 2017, 'Quantifying forces in cell biology', Nat Cell Biol, 19, 7, 742 - 751.

- Malinverno C, Corallino S, Giavazzi F, Bergert M, Li Q, Leoni M, Disanza A, Frittoli E, Oldani A, Martini E, Lendenmann T, Deflorian G, Beznoussenko GV, Poulikakos D, Ong KH, Uroz M, Trepat X, Parazzoli D, Maiuri P, Yu W, Ferrari A, Cerbino R & Scita G 2017, 'Endocytic reawakening of motility in jammed epithelia', Nat Mater​, 16, 5, 587.

- Oria R, Wiegand T, Escribano J, Elosegui-Artola A, Uriarte JJ, Moreno-Pulido C, Platzman I, Delcanale P, Albertazzi L, Navajas D, Trepat X, García-Aznar JM, Cavalcanti-Adam EA, Roca-Cusachs P 2017, 'Force loading explains spatial sensing of ligands by cells', Nature, 14;552(7684):219-224.

- Elosegui-Artola A, Andreu I, Beedle AEM, Lezamiz A, Uroz M, Kosmalska AJ, Oria R, Kechagia JZ, Rico-Lastres P, Le Roux A-L, Shanahan CM & Trepat X, Navajas D, Garcia-Manyes S &Roca-Cusachs P 2017, 'Fo