Joaquín Arribas

Joaquín Arribas

Parc de Salut Mar & Vall d'Hebron Institut d'Oncologia

Life & Medical Sciences

Dr. Arribas completed his studies in biochemistry at Univ. Autónoma de Madrid (1987). At the same university, he worked on the regulation of the proteasome and received his PhD in Biology (1991). Sponsored by a fellowship from the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science, he joined Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York (USA) (1992-96) working on the proteolytic processing of transmembrane growth factors. In 1997 he joined the oncology department at Hospital Vall d'Hebron in Barcelona as a Staff Scientist, since then he has lead the Growth Factors research group, which is focused on novel therapies against breast cancer. In 2010 he was appointed Director of VHIO´s Preclinical Research Program. In 2017, he was appointed Scientific Director of CIBERONC (2017). He resigned to join the Hospital del Mar Institute for Medical Investigation (IMIM) as Director (2020).


Research interests

  1. Evaluation of the activity of anti-cancer therapies, including immune therapies, in cancer patient-derivedcancer xenografts.
  2. Development of novel therapeutic strategies to treat breast and pancreatic tumors and identify mechanisms of resistance to current therapies.
  3. Development and preclinical characterization of T cell-based therapies -bispecific antibodies and chimeric antigen receports- against tumor-specific antigens.
  4. Characterization of the role of cellular senescence in breast cancer progression and treatment.

Selected publications

– Cortes, J., Perez-García, J. M., Llombart-Cussac, A., Curigliano, G., El Saghir, N. S., Cardoso, F., Barrios, C. H., Verma, S., Wagle, S., Pharm, S., Roman, J., Harbeck,N., Eniu, A., Kaufman, P. A., Tabernero, J., García-Estévez, L., Arribas, J., 2020, ‘Enhancing global access to essential cancer medicines’, CA Cancer J Clin, 70(2):105-124.

– Nadal-Serrano M, Morancho B, Escriva-de-Romani S, Morales CB, Luque A, Escorihuela M, Bravo ME, Peg V, Dijcks FA, Dokter WHA.; Cortes J, Saura C, Arribas J 2020, ‘The Second Generation Antibody-Drug Conjugate SYD985 Overcomes Resistances to T-DM1’, Cancers, 12, 3, 670.

– Serrano, C., Vivancos, A., López-Pousa, A., Matito, J., Mancuso, F. M., Valverde, C., Quiroga, S., Landolfi, S., Castro, S., Dopazo, C., Sebio, A., Virgili, A. C., Menso, M. M., Martín-Broto, J., Sansó, M., García-Valverde, A., Rosell, J., Fletcher, J. A., George, S., Carles, J. & Arribas, J. Clinical value of next generation sequencing of plasma cell-free DNA in gastrointestinal stromal tumors. BMC Cancer 5;20(1):99 (2020).

Selected research activities

Since 2015 I have been Principal Investigator of grants from European Union, Breast Cancer Research Foundation, National Institute of Health, Instituto Salud Carlos III, Asociación Española Contra el Cáncer, Agencia de Gestió d’Ajuts Universitaris i Recerca and FERO foundation.

Particularly prestigious are the grants of Breast Cancer Research Foundation and Spanish Association Against Cancer.

In addition, we have stablished several collaborations with pharma companies, including Byondis (former Synthon), Menarini, Molecular Partners, Principia, Celgene and Roche.

In 2017 I was appointed Scientific Director of CIBERONC (Spanish Network of Cooperative Cancer Research). In 2020, I resigned this position to join IMIM as Director and PSMAR as Research Director. I continue being Principal Investigator at VHIO.