Born in Avilés, Asturias, in 1974. Biochemist by University of Salamanca (1997) and PhD in Medicine (Hematology) by the same University in 2002, under the supervision of Prof. Alberto Orfao and Prof. Jesus San Miguel. Postdoctoral training in stem cell biology (Mick Bhatia Laboratory, London, ON, Canada; 2002-2005) and in childhood leukemia (Mel Greaves Laboratory, London, UK; 2005-2007). In 2007, I was appointed Director of the Andalusian Stem Cell Bank, and was leading my own lab at CIBM (Granada, Spain) until July 2011 when I moved to GENyO (Granada, Spain) as Principal Invesigator. In June 2013 I was appointed ICREA Research Professor and coordinator of Clinic campus of The Josep Carreras Leukemia Research Institute (Barcelona).
Research interests
1.-Understanding the etiology, pathogenesis and cellular origin of MLL-rearranged and MLL-germline pediatric Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia. 2.-Leukemic cell-bone marrow environment interactions and targeted therapies in Acute Myeloid Leukemia and therapy resistance. 3.- Adoptive T-cell-based CAR immunotherapy for B-cell, T-cell ALL, AML and bone sarcomas. 4.-Deciphering the intrinsic determinants and signaling pathways underlying hematopoietic from human pluripotent stem cells.
Selected publications
- Palma, LG et al. 2025, 'Chromatin activity of IκBα mediates the exit from naive pluripotency', Elife, 14, RP102784.
- Tirado, N et al. 2025, 'CAR-T cells targeting CCR9 and CD1a for the treatment of T cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia', Journal of hematology & oncology, 18 - 1 - 69.
- Almaghrabi, R et al. 2025, 'A heterozygous CEBPA mutation disrupting the bZIP domain in a RUNX1 and SRSF2 mutational background causes MDS disease progression', Nat.Comm. 16 - 1 - 5489.
- Zugasti I, Menendez P et al. 2025, 'CAR-T cell therapy for cancer: current challenges and future directions', Signal transduction and targeted therapy, 10 - 1 - 210.
- Baulenas-Farres M, Menéndez P et al. 2025, 'Proteins of the cancer cell secretome induce the protumoral microenvironment of diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma', Neuro-oncology advances, 7 - 1 - vdaf132.
- Ahlgren, L et al. 2025, 'The genomic landscape of relapsed infant and childhood KMT2A-rearranged acute leukemia', Nat.Comm. 16 - 1 - 8964.
- Pérez-Amill L, Armand-Ugón M, Val-Casals M et al 2025, 'A novel chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy targeting CD84 for the treatment of acute myeloid and T-cell lymphoblastic leukemias', Leukemia 39, 2432–2441
- Guerrero-Murillo M et all. 2025,'Integrative single-cell multi-omics of CD19-CARpos and CARneg Tcells suggest drivers of immunotherapy response in B cell neoplasias', Cell Reports Medicine, 6 - 3 - 102026
- Falgàs A, Lázaro-Gorines R et al. 2025, 'A TIM-3-Fc decoy secreted by engineered T cells improves CD19 CAR T-cell therapy in B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia', Blood, 145 - 22 - 2599 - 2613.
- Palma LG, Menendez P et al. 2025, 'An unbiased genomewide screen uncovers 7 genes that drive hematopoietic stem cell fate from mouse embryonic stem cells', Blood, 146 - 3 - 328 - 340.
- de Barrios O, Ocón-Gabarró I, Gusi-Vives M et al. 2025, 'HDAC7 induction combined with standard-of-care chemotherapy provides a therapeutic advantage in t(4;11) infant B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia', Biomark Res 13, 99