Mariano Barbacid

Biography

 Mariano Barbacid got his Ph.D. degree in Biochemistry from the Universidad Complutense of Madrid. From 1974-1978 he trained as a postdoctoral fellow in the group of Stuart A. Aaronson at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland. In 1978 he started his own group to work on the molecular biology of human tumours, and in the spring of 1982 got the isolation of the first human cancer gene and the identification of the first mutation associated with the development of human cancer. These seminal findings, also made independently by two other groups have been seminal to establish the molecular bases of human cancer. In 1988, he joined the Bristol Myers-Squibb Pharmaceutical Research Institute in Princeton, New Jersey where he became Vice President, Oncology Drug Discovery in 1995. In 1998, he returned to his native Madrid to establish the Spanish National Cancer Research Center (CNIO) that started its operations in 2002. In 2011, the Scimago Institutions Rankings ranked the CNIO 12th among more than 3,000 research centers Worldwide. In June 2011, he stepped down as Director to concentrate on his own research that currently focuses on the design of new animal models of cancer with the ultimate aim to identify and validate molecular targets with potential therapeutic value. To date, Dr. Barbacid has authored a total of 275 publications, including 200 original research articles in journals with impact factor, 29 invited reviews in refereed journals and 46 book chapters. The relevance of his work has been recognised by several awards, including the Young Investigator Award of the American Association of Cancer Research (USA, 1986), the Steiner Prize (Switzerland, 1988), the Ipsen Prize in Neurobiology (France, 1994), the Brupbaher Cancer Research Prize (Switzerland, 2005) and the Medal of Honour of the International Agency for Cancer Research (WHO) (Lyon 2007). In 2012, he was elected as a Foreign Member to the National Academy of Sciences of the US. He also holds two Honorary Degrees (Doctor Honoris causa) from theUniversidad Internacional Menendez y Pelayo (1995) and the University of Cantabria (2011). In 2011, he was awarded the Grand Cross of “2 de Mayo”, the highest distinction awarded by the Government of Madrid. He is a Member of EMBO (1996), Academia Europea (2004) and the European Academy of Cancer Sciences (2009)

Research Interest

Oncology