Pia Cosma

Centre de Regulació Genòmica

Life & Medical Sciences

ICREA Research Professor and Senior Scientist at Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG), Barcelona, since Sep. 2010. From 2009-2015 Honorary Associate Investigator at CNR . 2003-2010 Associate Investigator at TIGEM, Naples. 2004-2010 Lecturer at European School of Molecular Medicine. 1997-2000 Marie Curie Postdoc at IMP, Vienna. PhD in Cellular and Molecular Genetics, Univ. Federico II of Naples, 2000. Visiting Scientist in many Universities in USA. She has given invited talks at major international conferences and Research Institutes. She has been awarded several prizes including: EMBO Young Investigator (YIP), 2003; Marie Curie Excellence Award, 2005; "Vanguardia de la Ciència" prize, 2014; City of Barcelona prize, 2015. She is Order of Merit of the Italian Republic: Knight, 2007. ERC Starting Grant awardee, 2009 and HFSP Grant awardee, 2010. She is EMBO Member since 2010. She is coordinator of H2020 FET-Open from 2016 and awarded La Caixa Health, 2018


Research interests

Main interests of Cosma's group are to dissect mechanisms and factors controlling somatic cell reprogramming and tissue regeneration in mammalians. We showed that activation of the Wnt/ß-catenin signalling pathway enhances reprogramming of somatic cells after their fusion with embryonic stem cells. We are dissecting gene networks and reprogramming factors controlled by the activation of Wnt/ß-catenin pathway. Furthermore, by using super resolution microscopy we are investigating on the remodelling and looping of the chromatin fiber during the reprograming process. The activation of Wnt pathway controls regeneration in response to damage in lower and higher vertebrates. We found that the Wnt/ß-catenin signalling is also key to control cell-fusion-mediated regeneration in mammals. We recently showed that in vivo reprogramming of neurons and hepatocytes after fusion with hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells is a mechanism for tissue regeneration.

Selected publications

- Neguembor MV, Sebastian-Perez R, Aulicino F, Gomez-Garcia PA, Cosma MP & Lakadamyali M 2018, '(Po)STAC (Polycistronic SunTAg modified CRISPR) enables live-cell and fixed-cell super-resolution imaging of multiple genes', Nucleic Acids Research, 46, 5, e30.

- Pesaresi M, Bonilla-Pons SA, Simonte G, Sanges D, Di Vicino U & Cosma MP 2018, 'Endogenous Mobilization of Bone-Marrow Cells Into the Murine Retina Induces Fusion-Mediated Reprogramming of Muller Glia Cells', Ebiomedicine, 30, 38 - 51.

- Pesaresi M, Bonilla-Pons SA & Cosma MP 2018, 'In vivo somatic cell reprogramming for tissue regeneration: the emerging role of the local microenvironment', Current Opinion In Cell Biology, 55, 119 - 128.


Selected research activities

Invited Talks:

Biotech forum, EMBO conference, Dresda, Germany, 1-3 March 2018;

Cell Viewer annual meeting, Cyprus, 10-11 April 2018;

11th International Conference on Stem Cells and Regenerative Medicine in Guangzhou, China, 26-28 November 2018 

Guangzhou Insitute of Biomedicine and Health, China, 20th September 2018 

Awards:

La Caixa Health Research Award

Service in committees:

Member of Group Leader recruitment panels, head of tech transfer panel and member of thesis committees