Professor
Gene Expression Laboratory
Roger Guillemin Chair
LA JOLLA—As the COVID-19 pandemic continues across the globe, the Salk Institute joins in efforts to understand the fundamental science behind the novel coronavirus to pave the way to treatments …
LA JOLLA—If you want to reduce levels of inflammation throughout your body, delay the onset of age-related diseases and live longer—eat less food. That’s the conclusion of a new study …
LA JOLLA—Due to the modern tendency to postpone childbirth until later in life, a growing number of women are experiencing issues with infertility. Infertility likely stems from age-related decline of …
LA JOLLA—People with osteoarthritis, or “wear and tear” arthritis, have limited treatment options: pain relievers or joint replacement surgery. Now, Salk researchers have discovered that a powerful combination of two …
LA JOLLA—Salk Professors Joanne Chory, Joseph Ecker, Ronald Evans, Rusty Gage, Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte, Terrence Sejnowski, Reuben Shaw and Kay Tye have been named to the Highly Cited Researchers list by Clarivate Analytics. …
LA JOLLA—Little is known about the molecular and cellular events that occur during early embryonic development in primate species. Now, an internationally renowned team of scientists in China and the …
LA JOLLA—Although graduating from school, a first job and marriage can be important events in life, some of the most significant events happen far earlier: in the first few days …
LA JOLLA—The ability to edit genes in living organisms offers the opportunity to treat a plethora of inherited diseases. However, many types of gene-editing tools are unable to target critical …
LA JOLLA—Aging is a leading risk factor for a number of debilitating conditions, including heart disease, cancer and Alzheimer’s disease, to name a few. This makes the need for anti-aging …
LA JOLLA—Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte, a professor in Salk’s Gene Expression Laboratory, has been named one of TIME magazine’s 50 most influential people in healthcare for his scientific innovations in …
LA JOLLA—Plastic surgery to treat large cutaneous ulcers, including those seen in people with severe burns, bedsores or chronic diseases such as diabetes, may someday be a thing of the …
LA JOLLA—Salk scientists have created a new version of the CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing technology that allows them to activate genes without creating breaks in the DNA, potentially circumventing a major …
LA JOLLA—The immune system automatically destroys dysfunctional cells such as cancer cells, but cancerous tumors often survive nonetheless. A new study by Salk scientists shows one method by which fast-growing …
LA JOLLA—Scientists have, for the first time, corrected a disease-causing mutation in early stage human embryos with gene editing. The technique, which uses the CRISPR-Cas9 system, corrected the mutation for …
LA JOLLA—Salk Institute scientists have developed a novel technology to correct disease-causing aberrations in the chemical tags on DNA that affect how genes are expressed. These types of chemical modifications, …
LA JOLLA—Salk scientists and collaborators have shed light on a longstanding question about what leads to variation in stem cells by comparing induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) derived from identical …
LA JOLLA—When scientists talk about laboratory stem cells being totipotent or pluripotent, they mean that the cells have the potential, like an embryo, to develop into any type of tissue …
LA JOLLA—Rapid advances in the ability to grow cells, tissues and organs of one species within an organism of a different species offer an unprecedented opportunity for tackling longstanding scientific …
LA JOLLA—Graying hair, crow’s feet, an injury that’s taking longer to heal than when we were 20—faced with the unmistakable signs of aging, most of us have had a least …
LA JOLLA—Salk Institute researchers have discovered a holy grail of gene editing—the ability to, for the first time, insert DNA at a target location into the non-dividing cells that make …
LA JOLLA—Salk Professor Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte has been awarded a 2016 National Institutes of Health Pioneer Award, a highly coveted grant that supports the most innovative biomedical research, for …
Click …
LA JOLLA–Healthy brain, muscle, eye and heart cells would improve the lives of tens of thousands of people around the world with debilitating mitochondrial diseases. Now, researchers at the Salk …
LA JOLLA–Scientists at the Salk Institute have discovered a novel type of pluripotent stem cell–cells capable of developing into any type of tissue–whose identity is tied to their location in …
LA JOLLA–A study tying the aging process to the deterioration of tightly packaged bundles of cellular DNA could lead to methods of preventing and treating age-related diseases such as cancer, …
LA JOLLA–For thousands of women around the globe carrying a mitochondrial disease, having a healthy child can be a gamble. This set of diseases affect mitochondria, tiny powerhouses that generate …
LA JOLLA–Imagine a single drug that could prevent human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection, treat patients who have already contracted HIV, and even remove all the dormant copies of the virus …
LA JOLLA–Researchers at the Salk Institute have healed injured hearts of living mice by reactivating long dormant molecular machinery found in the animals’ cells, a finding that could help pave …
LA JOLLA—For the first time, scientists have turned human skin cells into transplantable white blood cells, soldiers of the immune system that fight infections and invaders. The work, done at …
LA JOLLA—The ability to switch out one gene for another in a line of living stem cells has only crossed from science fiction to reality within this decade. As with …
LA JOLLA, CA—Diseases affecting the kidneys represent a major and unsolved health issue worldwide. The kidneys rarely recover function once they are damaged by disease, highlighting the urgent need for …
LA JOLLA, CA—Stem cells are key to the promise of regenerative medicine: the repair or replacement of injured tissues with custom grown substitutes. Essential to this process are induced pluripotent …
LA JOLLA, CA—A new method for generating stem cells from mature cells promises to boost stem cell production in the laboratory, helping to remove a barrier to regenerative medicine therapies …
LA JOLLA, CA—For more than 20 years, doctors have been using cells from blood that remains in the placenta and umbilical cord after childbirth to treat a variety of illnesses, …
LA JOLLA, CA—Researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies have developed a way to use patients’ own cells to potentially cure sickle cell disease and many other disorders caused …
LA JOLLA, CA—In principle, genetic engineering is simple, but in practice, replacing a faulty gene with a healthy copy is anything but. Using mutated versions of the lamin A gene …
LA JOLLA, CA—The current pace of population aging is without parallel in human history but surprisingly little is known about the human aging process, because lifespans of eight decades or …
LA JOLLA, CA—Bony fish like the tiny zebrafish have a remarkable ability that mammals can only dream of: if you lop off a chunk of their heart they swim sluggishly …
LA JOLLA, CA—The search for the holy grail of regenerative medicine—the ability to “grow back” a perfect body part when one is lost to injury or disease—has been under way …
LA JOLLA, CA—Umbilical cord blood cells can successfully be reprogrammed to function like embryonic stem cells, setting the basis for the creation of a comprehensive bank of tissue-matched, cord blood-derived …
LA JOLLA, CA—A collaborative study by researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies uncovered that the tumor suppressor p53, which made its name as “guardian of the genome,” not …
La Jolla, CA—A study led by researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, has catapulted the field of regenerative medicine significantly forward, proving in principle that a human genetic …
La Jolla, CA — The Salk Institute for Biological Studies has been awarded a $6.6 million grant – the largest single award in the latest competition — by …
The first reports of the successful reprogramming of adult human cells back into so-called induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells, which by all appearances looked and acted liked embryonic …
La Jolla, CA – Chop off a salamander’s leg and a brand new one will sprout in no time. But most animals have lost the ability to replace …
La Jolla, CA – Having your heart in the right place usually means having it located on the left side of your body. But just how a perfectly …
La Jolla, CA – Despite their celebrated “immortality,” the capacity of embryonic stem (ES) cells for endless division has its limits. After a very extended childhood spent …
La Jolla, CA – Humans and other animals may appear to be symmetrical on the outside, but symmetry is only skin deep. Many body organs, such as the stomach, the …
La Jolla, CA – In this week’s journal Nature, scientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies report that they have solved one of the ‘holy grail’ puzzles of developmental …
La Jolla, CA – Scientists at the Salk Institute have discovered a novel genetic pathway that ensures body organs develop correctly and in the right position during embryonic development. The …
La Jolla, CA – A Salk Institute team of biologists, mathematicians, and physicists has uncovered a novel paradigm for cell communication that provides new insights into the complex question of …
La Jolla, CA – Whether they’re wings, fins or legs, those appendages generally known as limbs play a critical role for lifting, grasping, moving and other activities needed to sustain …
La Jolla, CA – To make sure your heart’s in the right place, you need to add just the right amount of vitamin A.
According to new research led by scientists …
La Jolla, CA – A single gene can transform embryonic tissue destined to form a wing into a leg instead, Salk Institute investigators have found. Their studies were performed in …
La Jolla, CA – In a developing organism, knowledge of right from left can often mean the difference between life and death. Certainly, the direction and ultimate destination in which …
Bachelor's of Pharmacy and Science, University of Valencia
PhD, Universities of Bologna, Italy and Valencia, Spain
Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Marburg; The European Molecular Biology Laboratories at Heidelberg, Germany; University of California, Los Angeles