Raúl Méndez elected EMBO member

IRB Barcelona /ICREA researcher, Raúl Méndez, has been recognized by EMBO for his excellence in research. Today EMBO welcomed 55 new members, 48 of who are from Europe and neighboring countries while seven scientists from Argentina, Australia, South Korea and the United States have joined as Associate Members. In total, EMBO membership now comprises almost 1,550 life scientists in the international scientific community. (read more in EMBO website)

Raúl Méndez, principal investigator of the Translational Control of Cell Cycle and Differentiation laboratory, said that “this is recognition is very much appreciated and I hope it opens up opportunities to work with groups involved in distinct fields of molecular biology to mine”.

One of Méndez’s current priorities is the study of the relation between the processes that control protein production and several diseases, such as cancer. “Alterations in the translational control of mRNAs cause tumour expansion, and therefore their study is critical in order to understand cancer and to develop new therapies”. For this purpose, this researcher combines studies using the frog Xenopus Laevis, a highly useful animal model in biomedicine, with other studies in mice and human cells.

Among his publications, special mention is given to work published in prestigious journals such as Nature, Cell and Nature Cell Biology in 2008, in which he showed the exquisite temporal and spatial intracellular regulation of mRNAs, and in Nature Cell Biology in 2010, where he reported for the first time that these regulatory mechanisms occur not only during embryonic development but also in adult cells. In 2011, he described in Nature Medicine a new reprogramming mechanism for the expression of genes responsible for turning a healthy cell into a tumor cell, in an study in collaboration with the IMIM-Institut de Recerca Hospital del Mar.

An international authority in gene regulation

Raúl Méndez obtained his PhD from the “Centro de Biología Molecular 'Severo Ochoa'” in Madrid in 1993. He then moved to the U.S., where he did post-doctoral work at the Louisiana State University Medical Center and at the University of Massachusetts. In 2001 he returned to Spain to take up a post as group leader in the Center for Genomic Regulation, where he remained until joining IRB Barcelona in January 2011.

The extensive research performed by Méndez has earned him several awards, including the prestigious “2010 Carmen y Severo Ochoa Award for Research” and the “2008 Ciutat de Barcelona Award” for research. He is currently involved in several European projects, among which special mention is given to that granted by the Association for International Cancer Research for the study of mRNAs in the context of pancreatic cancer.

Embo Press Release (PDF)