Elena González Muñoz

Biography

She studied Biology at he University of Sevilla and she did her PhD at the University of Barcelona (2002-2007). During her PhD, her project analyzed the role of caveolae and caveolin-1 in adipocyte physiology and the insulin pathway. This work was done under the supervision of Prof. Marta Camps Camprubí and Antonio Zorzano in their lab at the institute “Parque Científico de Barcelona”.

Research Interest

Next, she started her Postdoctoral period at Prof. Manuel Palacin´s laboratory in the Barcelona Biomedical Research Institute (IRBB) studying the mechanism that involves the aminoacid transporter subunit 4F2 in the cellular adhesion and tumorigenesis using mouse fibroblasts and embryonic stem cells as cellular models. In 2008, she joined Dra. Claudia Petrisch´s laboratory at University of California San Francisco to study the role of asymmetric cell division of neuro stem and progenitor cells in the generation/suppression of brain tumors using mouse oligodendroglioma models and human brain tumors from the Neurosurgery department at UCSF. In 2010, she moved to Michigan State University, as a researcher from the Program for Cell Therapy and Regenerative Medicine of Andalucia (Foundation "Progreso y Salud") to work under Jose Cibelli supervision in his lab “Cellular Reprogramming Laboratory”. Here she focused her effort in the cellular reprogramming field, optimizing this reprogramming process from somatic cell to pluripotent cell. In LARCEL, now she works on deep molecular analysis of somatic cell reprogramming and also developing neurodegenerative disease models using pluripotent cells obtained directly from patient somatic cells. Using this technology she will try to understand the origin and cause of this kind of pathologies, that will allow us to find new efficient therapies against them.