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Perucho Martinez, Manuel
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ICREA Research Professor at IMPPC (Institut de Medicina Predictiva i Personalitzada del Càncer). Life & Medical Sciences
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Manuel Perucho completed his PhD. in
Biological Sciences at the University of Madrid,
Spain in 1976 and continued as a postdoctoral
researcher at the Max-Planck-Institut, Berlin. In
1979 he moved to Cold Spring Harbor
Laboratory, and in 1983 to the State University
of New York (SUNY) at Stony Brook, both at Long
Island, New York. In 1988 he moved to California
Institute for Biological Research (CIBR) and in
1995 to Sanford-Burnham Medical Research
Institute (SBMRI), both in La Jolla, California. He
was appointed Director of the Institute of
Predictive and Personalized Medicine of Cancer
(IMPPC) of Barcelona in 2008. His work has
pioneered some of the landmarks in the
molecular basis of cancer, including the
discovery of oncogenes in the 80’s and the
mutator phenotype in the 90’s. Among others
prizes and awards, he was awarded the
AACR-National Foundation for Cancer Research
Professorship in Basic Cancer Research in 2005.
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Research Interests
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We study the genomic instability defining distinct molecular pathways for gastrointestinal cancer. Some cancers develop when the cell machinery preserving the integrity of the genome -- like computer spelling programs that detect and correct errors – is defective. When mutator genes are inactivated, many mutations in normal stem cells accumulate because they are not repaired. This remarkable genomic instability eventually lead to cancer when mutations activate oncogenes and inactivate tumor suppressors. Some mutator genes are not inactivated by mutations but by epigenetic silencing, a process strongly associated with aging. We proposed a model emphasizing the importance of the accumulation during aging of epigenetic errors – DNA demethylation-- in gastrointestinal cancer. This “wear & tear” model postulates that gradual demethylation irremediably occurs during aging affecting the fidelity of chromosomal replication, which in turn disrupts genome balance, starting the road to cancer.
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KeyWords
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Cancer, Genetics, Epigenetics
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