Tomás Alarcón

Tomás Alarcón

Centre de Recerca Matemàtica

Experimental Sciences & Mathematics

I obtained my PhD in Theoretical Physics from the University of Barcelona in 2000. After that I spent many wonderful years working as a postdoc at the University of Oxford, UK (2001-2003), University College London, UK (2003-2006), and Imperial College London, UK (2006-2009). I briefly held a senior researcher and group leader position at BCAM, Bilbao, Spain (2009-2010), after which I moved the Centre Recerca Matematica where I lead the Cancer Modelling Group. I have also held visiting fellowships at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, IIMAS (UNAM, Mexico DF), OCCAM (University of Oxford, UK), the Mathematical Institute (University of Oxford, UK), and the Mathematical Biosciences Institute (Columbus, Ohio, USA). In October 2015, I was appointed to an ICREA Research Professorship at the Centre de Recerca Matematica. 


Research interests

My research focuses on Mathematical Biology, particularly in multi-scale and stochastic modelling of tumour growth and tumour-induced angiogenesis. The main aim of my research is to understand the mechanisms involved in drug resitance and formulate therapeutic strategies which are robust to such mechanisms. Although tumour growth is my main field of specialisation, I am interested in other areas of Mathematical Biology, particularly regarding cell reprogramming in cancer and ageing, robustness and evolvability, and stochastic virus dynamics

Selected publications

- Cuyas E, Gumuzio J, Verdura S, Brunet J, Bosch-Barrera J, Martin-Castillo B, Alarcon T, Encinar JA, Martin AG, Menendez JA, 2020, 'The LSD1 inhibitor iadademstat (ORY-1001) targets SOX2-driven breast cancer stem cells: a potential epigenetic therapy in luminal-B and HER2-positive breast cancer subtypes', Aging-us, 12, 6, 4794 - 4814.

- Barrio R A, Alarcon T & Hernandez-Machado A 2020, 'The dynamics of shapes of vesicle membranes with time dependent spontaneous curvature', Plos One, 15, 1, e0227562.

- Cuyas E, Verdura S, Martin-Castillo B, Alarcon T, Lupu R, Bosch-Barrera J & Menendez JA 2020, 'Tumor-cell-intrinsic immunometabolism and precision nutrition in cancer immunotherapy' Cancers 12, 1757.

- Sardanyes J, Raich C & Alarcon T 2020, 'Noise-induced stabilization of saddle-node ghosts', New Journal Of Physics, 22, 9, 093064.

- Bernabeu MO, Kory J, Grogan JA, Markelc B, Beardo-Ricol, d'Avezac AM, Kaeppler J, Daly N, Hetherington J, Krueger T, Maini PK, Pitt-Francis JM, Muschel RJ, Alarcon T & Byrne HM 2020, 'Abnormal morphology biases haematocrit distribution in tumour vasculature and contributes to heterogeneity in tissue oxygenation'. Proc. Natl. Adad. Sci. 117(45), 27811-27819