Colorectal Cancer Predisposition Lab

Laura Valle has dedicated her scientific career to the identification of genetic causes of cancer predisposition and better characterization of new hereditary colorectal cancer syndromes; being her most relevant contributions: i) the identification of new potential hereditary colorectal cancer genes; ii) the molecular and clinical characterization of polyposis and colorectal cancer syndromes, which has had highly relevant impact in the translation into genetic diagnosis and counselling.

She obtained bachelor’s degrees in biology (2000) and Biochemistry (2001) (awards to most outstanding student) at the University of Navarra (Spain). She carried out her PhD thesis about hereditary colorectal cancer at the Spanish Cancer Research Center (CNIO) (2006, Extraordinary Doctorate Award). In order to continue her work on genetic susceptibility to cancer, she did a postdoctoral stay (2006-2008) at the Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center (supervisor: Albert de la Chapelle). In 2009, she joined the Hereditary Cancer Group at IDIBELL as Principal Investigator.

In 2012, Laura Valle obtained the National Award to the most outstanding young researcher in Human Genetics, in 2013, a l’Oréal-UNESCO “for women in science” research award, in 2015, an award on cooperative research in oncology (RTICC), and in 2020, the CIBERONC Best Female Researcher award. She is an elected Board member of the European Society of Human Genetics and, until recently, member of the executive board of the Spanish Society of Human Genetics (AEGH: 2017-2021).

Mariona Terradas is a senior postdoctoral researcher transitioning to independent principal investigator. She currently holds an AECC Investigator contract funded by the Scientific Foundation “Asociación Española Contra el Cáncer. Under the supervision of Laura Valle, her research is focused on: i) the identification of new hereditary colorectal cancer genes through the analysis of genome and exome sequencing data, methylomes and transcriptomes; ii) the establishment and CRISPR/Cas9 editing of human normal intestinal organoids that are being used for multiple projects of the group.

In addition to her research work at IDIBELL, Dr. Terradas teaches Cellular Biology and Clinical Genetics at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB).

Filipa Ponte holds a PhD in Biomedicine from the University of Porto (Portugal), focused on the study of the genetic basis of Fanconi anemia. Her postdoctoral work has been primarily focused on osteoporosis and aging (Center for Osteoporosis and Metabolic Bone Disease, College of Medicine, University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS)) and cancer. She joined the Colorectal Cancer Predisposition Group in 2022 to work on the functional characterization of a new polyposis predisposition gene and on the immune characterization of POLE and POLD1 mutated tumors.

Julen Viana joined the Colorectal Cancer Predisposition group in 2021 to work on the experimental part of his Master’s project. In 2022, he obtained a competitive fellowship to develop his PhD thesis work in the group. He is currently working on an in vitro model to functionally assess POLE and POLD1 genetic variants. He is developing large expertise in variant modeling in cell lines using CRISPR/Cas9 editing, variant classification, and genomic analyses focused on the identification of tumor mutational signatures.

Gemma Aiza is a laboratory technician with broad experience in molecular and histology techniques. She joined the Colorectal Cancer Predisposition Group in 2015.