AREAS OF SPECIALTY:

• skeletal muscle aging and rejuvenation

• sarcopenia

• muscle stem cell and regeneration

“Research on aging will uncover new ways to confront age-associated diseases, for a long life lived in health.”

Pura Muñoz-Cánoves, PhD

Pura Muñoz-Cánoves is a principal investigator at the Altos Labs San Diego Institute of Science. Prior to joining Altos Labs, she was an ICREA Professor and Cell Biology Professor at the Pompeu Fabra University (UPF) in Barcelona, and Senior Scientist at the Spanish National Cardiovascular Research Center (CNIC) in Madrid, Spain. She studied Pharmacology at the University of Valencia and obtained her PhD in Biology at the Madrid Autonomous University for work carried out at The Scripps Research Institute, and did postdoctoral work at the University of California-San Diego and Scripps Research Institute. She joined the Cancer Research Institute (now IdiBell) in Barcelona becoming a junior group leader in 1997. In 2002, she moved to the Center for Genomic Regulation (CRG) in Barcelona where she became a senior group leader in 2007. In 2009, she joined UPF and ICREA. Dr. Muñoz-Cánoves research aims to understand how stem cells and tissues age, and how to combat their age-associated functional decline. In recent years, her lab has demonstrated that at advanced (geriatric) age, quiescent muscle stem cells undergo proteostatic failure, leading to senescence, a reprogramming of their normal daily circadian functions and, eventually, to regenerative impairment. These studies also uncovered ways to boost regeneration of aged muscles. Her awards include the 2015 Pfizer and 2019 Lilly prizes in biomedicine, the 2019 King Jaume I Prize, and 2021 Spain National Prize Santiago Ramón y Cajal in Biomedicine, as well as ERC awards and permanent membership in EMBO and Academia Europaea.