Natalia obtained her Bachelor's degree in Biotechnology of University of Oviedo. Afterwards, she followed her master's degree in Cancer and Stem Cells and Developmental Biology offered by Utrecht University, where she got the bioinformatics profile. During her master’s programme, she performed a one-year internship in the group of Dr. Juan Garaycoechea at the Hubrecht Institute, where she studied the formation and repair of DNA damage, and a six-month internship in Dr. Jeroen de Ridder’s group at the UMC Utrecht, working with Nanopore sequencing (ONT) to look at allele-specific DNA methylation.
At the moment, she is doing her PhD in Molecular Biology and Biomedicine at University of Cantabria, directed by Ignacio Varela. Her project focuses on the development of multi-omic approaches to study chemotherapy resistance mechanisms in triple-negative breast cancer tumors and put forward novel therapeutic approaches against this tumor type. Natalia will be working with the obtention and analysis of scRNA-seq and CRISPR/Cas9 screening data, among others.
Genomic analysis of tumour development group
Research lines
- Role of chromatin remodeling genes in cancer development.
- Use of next-generation sequencing technologies for the identification of new molecular mechanisms of cancer initiation, progression and metastasis.
- Characterization of the role of intratumor heterogeneity in cancer progression
Funding
- Plan Nacional I+D+I (2012), Investigación Fundamental No Orientada. "Caracterización molecular del papel de los complejos remodeladores de cromatina en el desarrollo tumoral" SAF2012-31627 IP: Ignacio Varela
- Fundación Ramón Areces (2014), Ayudas a la investigación en Ciencias de la Vida y la Materia. "Caracterización molecular del papel de la disfunción mitocondrial en el desarrollo tumoral". IP: Ignacio Varela
- European Research Council (2014). Starting Grant. "Molecular Characterization of the role of intratumor heterogeneity in cancer progression and metastasis". IP: Ignacio Varela
- Plan Nacional I+D+I (2016), Proyectos RETOS . "Molecular study of the mechanisms of SWI/SNF complexes in tumour progression and their potential exploitation for cancer therapy." SAF2016-76758-R IP: Ignacio Varela
