Di Croce obtained his PhD from the University of Rome, followed by postdoctoral research in Marburg (Germany) started in 1996, where he explored the link between transcription and chromatin structure. Subsequently, he joined the European Institute for Oncology in Milan where he unveiled a crucial link between genetic and epigenetic changes in cancer progression. In 2003, he established his laboratory at CRG (Barcelona) as an ICREA Professor. Since its formation, Di Croce’s group has been at the forefront of unravelling the impact of epigenetic alterations and carcinogenesis processes in Leukemia and Pediatric brain tumors. His groundbreaking findings have been featured in prestigious journals like Science, Nature, and Cell. In recognition of his contributions, Di Croce was elected as an EMBO member in 2013 and has been a prominent figure in the international scientific community.
Research interests
Epigenetic changes, such as histone modifications and DNA methylation, are common alterations in cancer cells. Our laboratory is addressing the molecular basis of epigenetic alterations during the early phase of the tumorigenesis process. The expression of onco-proteins in hematopoietic precursor cells provides a unique model system to follow the molecular step from a normal to a transformed cell on the level of gene transcription, nuclear structure and chromatin. More recently, Di Croce lab is interested in understanding how variations in the assembly of the Polycomb complexes occur and influence mES cell differentiation and animal development, and the role of 'oncohistone' in pediatric cancers.
Selected publications
- Llorente A, Blasco M T, Espuny I, Guiu M, Ballare C, Blanco E, [.....] I Avgustinova A, Di Croce L, & Gomis R R (2023). 'MAF amplification licenses ERα through epigenetic remodelling to drive breast cancer metastasis - PubMed (nih.gov) Nat Cell Biol 25(12) 1833-1847.
- Aranda S, Alcaine-Colet A, Ballaré C, et al. 2023, 'Thymine DNA glycosylase regulates cell-cycle-driven p53 transcriptional control in pluripotent cells', Molecular Cell, 83, 15, 2673 -2691.
- Basu, S., Shukron, O., [....] L., Blanco, E., Bartke, T., Di Croce, L., Berger, I., Schaffitzel, C., Lee, S. F., Stevens, T. J., Klenerman, D., Hendrich, B. D., Holcman, D., & Laue, E. D. (2023). Live-cell three-dimensional single-molecule tracking reveals modulation of enhancer dynamics by NuRD. Nat Struct Mol Biol, 30(11), 1628-1639
- Sola P, Mereu E, Bonjoch J et al. 2023, 'Targeting lymphoid-derived IL-17 signaling to delay skin aging', Nature Aging, 3, 688-704.
- González-Ramírez M, Blanco E & Di Croce L 2023, 'A computational pipeline to learn gene expression predictive models from epigenetic information at enhancers or promoters', STAR Protoc, 4(1):101948.
- Aranda S & Di Croce L 2023, 'Isolation of Chromatin Proteins by Genome Capture', Methods Mol Biol, 2655, 91-99.
- Blanco E, Ballare C, Di Croce L & Aranda S 2023, 'Quantitative Comparison of Multiple Chromatin Immunoprecipitation-Sequencing (ChIP-seq) Experiments with spikChIP'. Methods Mol Biol, 2624, 55-72
Selected research activities
• Organized the Keystone Symposium on “Chromatin and Epigenetics” Colorado, USA
• Chair of the Italian National Committee for the Evaluation of Research (CNVR)
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ERC Panel Member for the Starting Grant (StG)Since 2020 Coordinator of the ‘Genome Biology’ Programme
• EMBO Member (since 2013)