Group Leader of the Cancer Cell States & Metastasis Immunity Lab at the Hospital del Mar Research Institute (HMRI). His scientific career is driven by a central objective: to understand how cancer cell-state plasticity and immune surveillance shape breast cancer metastasis, and how these principles can be therapeutically exploited.

He obtained his PhD in 2012 at the IBMB-CSIC / University of Barcelona under the supervision of Dr. Timothy Thomson, where his doctoral work provided paradigm-shifting insights into epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT) plasticity, revealing how embryonic stem cell–like programs and their reversion govern metastatic competence and colonization. He then pursued postdoctoral training (2012–2017) at Princeton University in the laboratory of Dr. Yibin Kang, a world leader in breast cancer metastasis research. During more than five years at Princeton, he specialized in mammary stem cell programs driving metastasis and uncovered mechanisms by which normal and malignant stem cells evade immune surveillance, elucidating the spatiotemporal dynamics of EMT–MET transitions within the metastatic microenvironment.

Since establishing his independent group in 2018, the lab integrates cancer cell-state dynamics, stem cell biology, and tumor immunology to develop innovative immunotherapeutic and immunopreventive strategies. The group has contributed key conceptual advances, including the identification of immune-evasive cancer stem cell states, the distinctive immunology of micrometastasis, and the demonstration that mRNA-based therapies can be used to therapeutically modulate cancer cell states.