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Salvador A. Benitah

Salvador A. Benitah

Institut de Recerca Biomèdica

Life & Medical Sciences

Salvador Aznar Benitah is a group leader at the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona). He holds a BSc/MSc in Biochemistry from the University of McGill (Montreal, Canada), from where he moved to the Biomedical Research Institute (Madrid, Spain) to obtain a PhD in Molecular Biology. His professional career continued at the London Research Institute (Cancer Research UK) in the laboratory of Prof. Fiona Watt where he acquired extensive knowledge on adult stem cells. He started as a Junior ICREA researcher at the CRG in 2007 where he studied the role of adult stem cells in tissue homeostasis and cancer. Since September 2012 he is an ICREA Research Professor. In September 2013 he became a Senior Researcher in the Oncology Department at the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona).


Research interests

Our global aim is to characterize the molecular pathways that regulate the behaviour of normal stem cells during homeostasis, and how they become deregulated during carcinogenesis and ageing. Research Lines: – What intrinsic mechanisms regulate adult stem cell function, and how are they deregulated during ageing and cancer? – How do adult stem cells communicate with their local environment and how is the system coordinated to dictate stem cell function? – What systemic cues communicate with adult stem cells and how do distant adult stem cells coordinate their function at the level of the whole organism? – How does deregulation of pathways that control stem cell behaviour contribute to the maintenance and progression of carcinomas?

Selected publications

– Choi J-E, Sebastian C, Ferrer CM, Lewis CA, Sade-Feldman M, LaSalle T, Gonye A, Lopez BGC, Abdelmoula WM, Regan MS, Cetinbas M, Pascual G, Wojtkiewicz GR, Silveira GG, Boon R, Ross KN, Tirosh I, Saladi SV, Ellisen LW, Sadreyev RI, Benitah SA,  Agar NYR, Hacohen N & Mostoslavsky R 2021, ‘A unique subset of glycolytic tumour-propagating cells drives squamous cell carcinoma’, Nature Metabolism, 3, 2, 182 – +.

– Rubio-Ponce A, Ballesteros I, Quintana JA, Solanas G, Benitah SA, Hidalgo A & Sanchez-Cabo F 2021, ‘Combined statistical modeling enables accurate mining of circadian transcription’, Nar Genomics And Bioinformatics, 3, 2, lqab031.

– Greco CM, Koronowski KB, Smith JG, Shi J, Kunderfranco P, Carriero R, Chen S, Samad M, Welz P-S, Zinna VM, Mortimer T, Chun SK, Shimaji K, Sato T, Petrus P, Kumar A, Vaca-Dempere M, Deryagian O, Van C,  Kuhn JMM,  Lutter D, Seldin MM, Masri S, Li W, Baldi P, Dyar KA, Munoz-Canoves P, Benitah SA & Sassone-Corsi P 2021, ‘Integration of feeding behavior by the liver circadian clock reveals network dependency of metabolic rhythms’, Science Advances, 7, 39, eabi7828.

– Pascual, Gloria; Dominguez, Diana; Elosua-Bayes, Marc; Beckedorff, Felipe; Laudanna, Carmelo; Bigas, Claudia; Douillet, Delphine; Greco, Carolina; Symeonidi, Aikaterini; Hernandez, Inmaculada; Gil, Sara Ruiz; Prats, Neus; Bescos, Coro; Shiekhattar, Ramin; Amit, Moran; Heyn, Holger; Shilatifard, Ali; Benitah, Salvador Aznar 2021, ‘Dietary palmitic acid promotes a prometastatic memory via Schwann cells’, Nature, 599(7885):485-490.

– Avgustinova, Alexandra; Laudanna, Carmelo; Pascual-Garcia, Monica; Rovira, Quirze; Djurec, Magdolna; Castellanos, Andres; Urdiroz-Urricelqui, Uxue; Marchese, Domenica; Prats, Neus; Van Keymeulen, Alexandra; Heyn, Holger; Vaquerizas, Juan M.; Benitah, Salvador Aznar 2021, ‘Repression of endogenous retroviruses prevents antiviral immune response and is required for mammary gland development’, Cell Stem Cell, 28, 10, 1790 – +.
ICREA Memoir 2021