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Joan Massagué opens the new year of the Interacademic Council of Catalonia

By 11 de October de 2005November 18th, 2020No Comments
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 11.10.2005

Joan Massagué opens the new year of the Interacademic Council of Catalonia

On Thursday 13 October, Joan Massagué, researcher at the Institute of Biomedical Research and assessor to the Parc Científic de Barcelona (PCB, Barcelona Science Park), will open the 2005-2006 course of the Interacademic Council of Catalonia with a conference on metastasis. The act will be held at 19.30 h at the (Catalan Royal Academy of Pharmacy) (c/ Hospital, 56, Barcelona).

This act is the first that Joan Massagué undertakes as an honorary academic of the Catalan Royal Academy of Pharmacy, an award that this academy granted last December in recognition of his prestigious relevance in work performed in pharmaceutical science. The researcher is shortly to assume the direction of a new oncological research programme on metastasis at the Institute of Biomedical Research of the PCB, which will include the “Tumour Metastasis Research Laboratory” (METLAB).

Joan Massagué (Barcelona, 1953) holds a Ph.D. in Pharmacy (Biochemisrty) from the Universitat de Barcelona. In 1978, he moved to Brown University, on Rhode Island (USA), where he discovered the structure of the insulin receptor. At present, he directs the Cancer Biology and Genetics Programme at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and is also a researcher at Howard Hughes Medical Institute in New York. In his teaching capacity, Joan Massagué is a professor at the Well Graduate School of Medical Sciences.

Joan Massagué is the principal researcher in lines on the regulation of cell division and cancer metastasis, author of some 250 scientific articles on these topics, and one of the fifty most cited investigators in all scientific fields in the last twenty years. His research has been crucial for improving our knowledge of mechanisms that allow the arrest of cell proliferation, a process that, when dysregulated, leads to the formation of tumours. In addition, his studies have allowed the identification of genes that control metastasis of human breast cancer cells to other organs; a milestone that opens up new research possibilities on this aspect of cancer.

Among other references, Joan Massagué has received more that twenty-five awards, including the Prince of Asturias Prize, the King Juan Carlos I National Research Award and the Howard Taylor Ricketts Award. The researcher is also an elected member of the US National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the European Molecular Biology Organization and the Spanish Royal Academies of Medicine and Pharmacy.