FRANCESC VIÑALS
Dr. Francesc Viñals obtained is Ph.D. in Biology in 1996 at the University of Barcelona. From 1996 to 2000 he was a postdoctoral fellow in the Laboratory for Signaling, Hypoxia and Cancer directed by Dr. Jacques Pouysségur at the CNRS-University of Nice (France). In 2000, he joined the Department of Physiological Sciences of the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences of the University of Barcelona in the Bellvitge Campus (L’Hospitalet de Llobregat). In 2001 he obtained a Ramón y Cajal researcher contract, starting his own research group working in Angiogenesis Signaling. In September 2005 he moved to the Translational Research Laboratory (LRT) of the Catalan Institute of Oncology (ICO) in order to direct a new research group on Tumor Angiogenesis. Currently Dr. Viñals is Full Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology in the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Barcelona and director of the Molecular Signaling Group in IDIBELL. Throughout these years the main lines of research of the group lead by Dr. Viñals have been the mechanisms involved in the pro-angiogenic effect of BMPs and TGF in physiological and pathological situations (in cancer or in hereditary telangiectasias), and the use of anti-angiogenics as an anti-tumoral strategy in pancreatic, testicular and ovarian cancers. Current lines of research on epithelial ovarian cancer include the identification of new early biomarkers, the implication of the metabolism on generation of resistance to chemotherapy and targetted therapies treatments, as well as the mechanisms implicated in transcoelomic and haematogeneous dissemination.