Manel Esteller, Director of the Josep Carreras Leukaemia Research Institute, ICREA Research Professor and Professor of Genetics at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Barcelona, ​​has received the Award “Constantes y Vitales” for his scientific career in biomedical research.

These awards have the objective of promoting and valuing the work of investigators in the territory, as well as supporting science and research. The awards are an initiative from laSexta Corporate Responsibility, undertaken together with the AXA Foundation. Among researchers awarded in previous editions are Drs. Luis Enjuanes, Mariano Esteban and Vicente Larraga for their research on virology; Dr. Francisco Martínez Mojica, whose basic research has allowed the development of the CRISPR/Cas9 genetic editing technique; and Dr Francisco Sánchez-Madrid, a pioneer researcher in immunology. Dr. Manel Esteller receives this recognition for his research on Epigenetics and its alterations in human diseases, especially cancer.

Dr. Manel Esteller graduated in Medicine and Surgery from the University of Barcelona and received his doctorate specializing in molecular genetics of endometrial carcinoma at the same University. He was a postdoctoral and associate researcher at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine (Baltimore, USA), where he studied DNA methylation and its relationship to cancer. He led the Cancer Epigenetics Laboratory at the National Cancer Research Center (CNIO) in Madrid and returned to Catalonia in 2008 to direct the Cancer Epigenetics and Biology Program (PEBC) at the Bellvitge biomedical campus. Since 2019 he is the Director of the Josep Carreras Leukaemia Research Institute (IJC).

Dr. Esteller's research has made it possible to understand the contribution of epigenetic alterations in various human pathologies, particularly cancer, and to obtain disease-associated biomarkers, as well as to develop new treatments.