Research Division of Genome Biology

Research interests

At present, the Division integrates the activities of five groups.

Research in the Bartek group focuses on various mechanistic aspects of the DNA damage response. Of particular interest is discovery of targets and markers for personalized cancer treatment and finding novel components or mechanisms of genome integrity maintenance. In a second line of research the Bartek group aims to better understand the principles of ribosome biogenesis surveillance, that is, how cells are sensing defects in ribosome production.

The Fernández-Capetillo laboratory focuses on the use of cell-based phenotypic screens for the development of new therapies or molecules of biomedical interest. In contrast to target-oriented approaches, phenotypic screens focus on identifying compounds that can yield a specific phenotype (e.g. killing cancer cells, or limiting the toxicity of deleterious mutations), leaving the target identification for a later step. Despite much of the efforts from the pharmaceutical industry in the recent decades have opted for target-oriented projects, truth is that a large part of the medicines that are used today were discovered through phenotypic approaches, and in some cases the true target remains unknown. Our research mostly focuses on diseases that are largely neglected by the industry, or in the discovery of new uses for already existing medicines for the treatment of other conditions.

Research Community Program: PhenoTarget