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Transplant International Deputy Editor-in-Chief

Dra. Nuria Montserrat became interested in organ regeneration and stem cells during her master and PhD training that finished in 2006. The same year she got a Postdoctoral fellowship from the Fundaçao para a Ciência e Tecnología (Portugal). In 2007 she moved as a post-doctoral researcher at the Hospital of Santa Creu i Sant Pau in Barcelona.

In 2008 she joined the Center of Regenerative Medicine of Barcelona (CMRB) thanks to the support of a Juan de la Cierva fellowship under the direction of Dr. Izpisúa Belmonte. In 2010 she first co-authored how to reprogram cord blood stem cells for the first time (Nature Protocols, 2010). Then she first-coauthor the first work deriving iPSCs with new factors (Cell Stem Cell, 2013). She also collaborated in projects aimed to characterize the genomic integrity of human iPSCs as well as their differentiation towards different lineages for applications in human disease modeling (Stem Cells, 2011; Nature, 2012; Nature, 2012, Nature Communications, 2014). She has first co-authored how the reactivation of endogenous pathways can be artificially reactivated and promote heart regeneration in mammals (Cell Stem Cell, 2014).

Her expertise in the fields of somatic reprogramming and organ regeneration was recognized with an awarded an ERC Starting Grant by 2014 which allowed her to become Junior group leader at the Institute of Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC).

In January 2015 she got a Ramon y Cajal fellowship (first ranked candidate, 100/100 points) and since 2019 she is an ICREA Research Professor and Senior Group Leader at IBEC. During these years her findings in the field of Regenerative Medicine led to the derivation, for the first time, of cardiac grafts from human pluripotent stem cells and decellularized cardiac myocardium (Biomaterials, 2016), and the derivation of renal analogues with 3D bioprinting (Materials Today, 2017) and vascularized kidney organoids from hPSCs (Nature Materials, 2019).

She has recently co-led on the application of kidney organoid technology to model SARS-CoV-2 infections (Cell, 2020) identifying a therapeutic compound that nowadays is under clinical trial in COVID19 patients (The Lancet Respiratory Medicine, 2020; EMBO Molecular Medicine, 2020). Their Cell paper has been highlighted as a Research Highlight in both Nature Reviews Nephrology and in the Nature journal, also attracting remarkable attention (more than 200 national press releases, and 30 radio/television) being awarded as the “Best biomedical research publication 2020” (Constantes y Vitales Prize).
With the aim to further understand on the central role of metabolism in renal fate and damage protection she has recently co-led the first work on the identification of metabolic regulators protecting the renal tubule from acute injury exploiting kidney organoid technology (Cell Metabolism, 2020). In sum, from 2015, her work has attracted almost 8 M€ of direct competitive funding and around 1.2 M€ in personnel related grants, from both Spanish and European institutions.

All these efforts have been recently awarded with the prestigious EMBO Young Investigator Prize. In December 2020 the ERC has recognized all these efforts and she have been awarded with the prestigious ERC Consolidator Grant to study the interplay between mechanobiology and metabolism during human kidney development and disease.

Her commitment to scientific dissemination and communication has allowed her to participate in more than 300 outreach activities to promote our research activities to the general public, with a particular focus to young girls and woman in science. For this reason, she was selected as Commissioner of the first City and Science Biennial of Barcelona in 2019 being re-elected for the second edition (June, 2021).

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