Cristina Munoz-pinedo BSc, PhD

Cristina Muñoz-Pinedo leads the Cell Death Regulation group at IDIBELL (Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute) in Barcelona, Spain. She obtained a Biology degree at the University of Sevilla, and she started her scientific career in the field of cell death and cancer metabolism under the supervision of Dr. Abelardo López-Rivas at the CSIC, in Granada, Spain. After several short stays in international laboratories, she received her Ph.D. from the University of Granada in 2001.

She then moved to San Diego to work under the supervision of Doug Green at the La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology, where she studied the role of the mitochondria during cell death as an initiator of the apoptotic process and as a “victim” of caspase activation. After a short stay in St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, in 2006 she moved back to Spain to start a lab whose main interest is to understand why and how cells die when deprived of nutrients. Her lab is trying to apply this knowledge to improve the treatment of cancer (to kill cancer cells with metabolic inhibitors) and stroke (to prevent ischemic cell death).