The ICREA researcher who leads the Biomedical Genomics group at IRB Barcelona (Institute for Research in Biomedicine), and professor at the Pompeu Fabra University, Nuria López-Bigas, has been named a full member of the Royal Academy of Sciences (RAC). In her acceptance speech, on the future of cancer research, the Catalan researcher emphasized the fact that, in order to understand the disease, it will also be necessary to analyze healthy tissue: “The definition of which genes and mutations cause cancer will be refined in the coming years using information from healthy tissue”. With the admission of López-Bigas, the RAC adds the first female expert in bioinformatics and the 11th female academic member out of a total of 55 experts in Exact, Physical and Natural Sciences.

In her speech entitled “Cancer: a process of Darwinian evolution”, the computational biologist explained that “with the identification of mutations in healthy tissue, we can begin to have a more precise vision of which genes and mutations are directly involved in the development of a tumor”. This research is possible thanks to the application of new “high-precision sequencing” technologies that make it possible to directly observe the mutations present in still healthy tissue.

The ceremony, held this Wednesday evening at the headquarters of the Royal Academy of Sciences in Madrid, was attended by the rector of the Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Laia de Nadal.