Maria Pia Cosma

Maria Pia Cosma

Centre de Regulació Genòmica

Life & Medical Sciences

ICREA Research Professor and Senior Scientist at Centre for Genomic Regulation since Sep 2010. Acadèmica Corresponent Reial Acadèmia de Medicina de Catalunya since 2025. 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. EMBO Young Investigator (YIP), 2003; Marie Curie Excellence Award, 2005; "Vanguardia de la Ciència" prize, 2014; City of Barcelona prize, 2015; EIC Women Leadership 2022.  Professor Joaquín Barraquer Award 2023. She is Order of Merit of the Italian Republic: Knight, 2007. ERC Starting Grant awardee, 2009 and HFSP Grant awardee, 2010. EMBO Member since 2010. Coordinator of H2020 FET-Open Cellviewer and EcaBox. La Caixa Health Reacher awardee in 2018 and 2024.

Research interests

Main interests of Cosma's group are to dissect mechanisms and factors controlling somatic cell reprogramming and tissue regeneration in mammals. We are investigating gene networks and reprogramming factors controlled by the activation of Wnt/ß-catenin pathway. Furthermore, by using super resolution microscopy we made discoveries 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 human Muller glia cells can fuse with mesenchymal stem cells. The resulting hybrids can differentiate in retinal neurons in human retinal organoids. Moreover we identified the interactions between the chemokine receptors and specific chemokines able to enhance migration and integration of transplanted cells into the retina.

Selected publications

- Garate X, Gómez-García PA, Merino MF, Angles MC, Zhu CG, Castells-Garcia A, Ed-daoui I, Martin L, Ochiai H, Neguembor MV & Cosma MP 2024, 'The relationship between nanoscale genome organization and gene expression in mouse embryonic stem cells during pluripotency transition', Nucleic acids research.
- Martinez-Sarmiento JA, Cosma MP & Lakadamyali M 2024, 'Dissecting gene activation and chromatin remodeling dynamics in single human cells undergoing reprogramming', Cell reports, 43 - 5 -114170.
- Kant A, Guo ZX, Vinayak V, Neguembor MV, Li WS, Agrawal V, Pujadas E, Almassalha L, Backman V, Lakadamyali M, Cosma MP & Shenoy VB 2024, 'Active transcription and epigenetic reactions synergistically regulate meso-scale genomic organization', Nature communications, 15 - 1 -4338.
- Nakagawa S, Carnevali D, Tan XT, Alvarez MJ, Parfitt DE, Di Vicino U, Arumugam K, Shin W, Aranda S, Normanno D, Sebastian-Perez R, Cannatá C, Cortes P, Neguembor MV, Shen MM, Califano A & Cosma MP 2024, 'The Wnt-dependent master regulator NKX1-2 controls mouse pre-implantation development', Stem cell reports, 19 - 5 - 689 - 709.
- Carnevali D, Zhong LM, González-Almela E, Viana C, Rotkevich M, Wang AP, Franco-Barranco D, Gonzalez-Marfil A, Neguembor MV, Castells-Garcia A, Arganda-Carreras I & Cosma MP 2024, 'A deep learning method that identifies cellular heterogeneity using nanoscale nuclear features', Nature machine intelligence, 6 - 9.

Selected research activities

Invited talks:
Keystone Symposia on Emerging Cellular Therapies / Stem Cells and Regeneration, Sante Fe, USA, 22-25 January 2024; 
ESI - Erwin Schrödinger International Institute for Mathematics and Physics, Vienna, Austria March 4th-7th2024; 
Hong Kong City University, Hong Kong, China, 25th September 2024; 
Shenzhen Bay Laboratory, Shenzhen, China 26-29th October 2024; 
EMBL 50th anniversary conference, Barcelona, Spain, 6th November 2024