This February, Alfonso Martínez Arias will be joining the UPF Department of Experimental and Health Sciences (DCEXS) as an ICREA Senior research professor. He has been granted this distinction by the Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies (ICREA), which aims to promote and develop research and knowledge for the benefit of society.

He has made outstanding contributions in the molecular underpinning of cell fate heterogeneity and self-organization properties of cell behaviour during development.

Alfonso Martínez Arias is a developmental biologist and has enjoyed a prestigious international research career. Having obtained his doctorate at the University of Chicago, he moved to Cambridge to conduct research at the Molecular Biology Laboratory of the Medical Research Council (MRC). He then joined the University of Cambridge, first as a Wellcome Trust Senior Fellow and, since 2003, with a full professorship at the Department of Genetics. Professor Martínez Arias has made outstanding contributions in the molecular underpinning of cell fate heterogeneity and self-organization properties of cell behaviour during development. He is an elected member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) since 2007, and in 2012 he was awarded the Waddington Medal for his contributions to Developmental Biology.

Gastruloids, a model for studying the development stages of the embryo

His research focuses on understanding how an egg becomes an organism. When an egg is fertilized, it is activated and, over the course of nine months, it transforms into a mass of cells carved into the tissues and organs that make us what we are. “My interest lies in understanding this transformation with a focus on the early stages. It turns out that, at four weeks, when we measure no more than 1 mm, we have the seeds of what we will become and a beating heart: fascinating!”, he explains. 

Using embryonic stem cells, his team has been able to reproduce the initial events that create this situation in mice and humans and are starting to use this experimental system for understanding normal and pathological processes. He details that: “this system is called gastruloid because it mimics the process of ‘gastrulation’, a choreographed sequence of cell movements that transforms the clump of cells resulting from fertilization into an outline of the organism that we can see at four weeks in humans”.

Gastruloids mimic the process of ‘gastrulation’, a choreographed sequence of cell movements that transforms the clump of cells resulting from fertilization into an outline of the organism that we can see at four weeks in humans. 

“I hope this new stage will prove very interesting”, he affirms. He found out about the Barcelona Biomedical Research Park (PRBB) through contacts with the Center for Genomic Regulation in Barcelona (CRG) and collaborations with groups at UPF and the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL Barcelona). “These interactions and the promise they have for my work have led me to leave behind 37 years at Cambridge”, he adds.

Referring to his plans, he concludes: “I would like to create a platform for the use stem cell models to study normal and pathological development of mammals, with an emphasis on humans, to provide a cellular tool cell that complements genetic studies”.

ICREA is an entirely public programme for attracting and retaining talent, funded by the Generalitat (Government ) of Catalonia. It was launched in 2001 in response to the need for new hiring formulas that allow competing on equal terms with other research systems. It characterized by being a system based solely on merit, leadership capacity and scientific excellence.