Nuria Pulido PhD

Dra. Nuria Montserrat became interested in organ regeneration and stem cells during her master's and PhD training that finished in 2006. The same year she got a Postdoctoral fellowship from the Fundaçao para a Ciência e Tecnología (Portugal). In 2007 she moved as a post-doctoral researcher at the Hospital of Santa Creu i Sant Pau in Barcelona.

In 2008 she joined the Center of Regenerative Medicine of Barcelona (CMRB) thanks to the support of a Juan de la Cierva fellowship under the direction of Dr. Izpisúa Belmonte. In 2010 she first co-authored how to reprogram cord blood stem cells for the first time (Nature Protocols, 2010). Then she coauthored the first work deriving iPSCs with new factors (Cell Stem Cell, 2013). She also collaborated on projects aimed to characterize the genomic integrity of human iPSCs as well as their differentiation towards different lineages for applications in human disease modeling (Stem Cells, 2011; Nature, 2012; Nature, 2012, Nature Communications, 2014). She has first co-authored how the reactivation of endogenous pathways can be artificially reactivated and promote heart regeneration in mammals (Cell Stem Cell, 2014).

Nuria's expertise in the fields of somatic reprogramming and organ regeneration was recognized with an ERC Starting Grant in 2014 which allowed her to become a Junior group leader at the Institute of Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC). In January 2015 she got a Ramon y Cajal fellowship (first ranked candidate, 100/100 points) and since 2019 she has been an ICREA Research Professor and Senior Group Leader at IBEC. During these years her findings in the field of Regenerative Medicine led to the derivation, for the first time, of cardiac grafts from human pluripotent stem cells and decellularized cardiac myocardium (Biomaterials, 2016), and the derivation of renal analogs with 3D bioprinting (Materials Today, 2017) and vascularized kidney organoids from hPSCs (Nature Materials, 2019).

Nuria has recently co-led the application of kidney organoid technology to model SARS-CoV-2 infections (Cell, 2020) identifying a therapeutic compound that is under clinical trial in COVID-19 patients (The Lancet Respiratory Medicine, 2020; EMBO Molecular Medicine, 2020). Their Cell paper has been highlighted as a Research Highlight in both Nature Reviews Nephrology and the Nature Journal, also attracting remarkable attention (more than 200 national press releases, and 30 radio/television) and being awarded the “Best Biomedical Research Publication 2020” (Constantes y Vitales Prize). With the aim to further understand the central role of metabolism in renal fate and damage protection, she has recently co-led the first work on the identification of metabolic regulators protecting the renal tubule from acute injury exploiting kidney organoid technology (Cell Metabolism, 2020). In sum, from 2015, her work has attracted almost 8 M€ of direct competitive funding and around 1.2 M€ in personnel-related grants, from both Spanish and European institutions.