Project Description

Biography:

Maria was born and raised in Mallorca, where she obtained her B.Sc. in Biochemistry from the University of the Balearic Islands in 2023. Her interest in cancer research was sparked during an AECC fellowship at the Health Research Institute of the Balearic Islands (IdISBa) under Dr. Diego Marzese, investigating the impact of ethnicity on triple-negative breast cancer biology. She then moved to Heidelberg, Germany, to pursue the Molecular Biosciences Master’s—Cancer Biology program at the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), graduating in 2025. At DKFZ, she joined Dr. Felix Hartmann’s and Dr. Martina Seiffert’s laboratories, where she focused on the tumor immune microenvironment to describe the epigenetic states and improve CAR-T cell treatment, respectively. During this time, she completed an Erasmus+ fellowship in Dr. René Bernards’ laboratory at the Netherlands Cancer Institute (NKI), investigating tumor-intrinsic mechanisms of drug resistance using CRISPR-Cas9 screening and transcriptomic analysis.

Maria has recently joined the ADAPTMET ITN in the lab of Dr. Roger Gomis, where she will aim to decode the transcriptomic and epigenetic plasticity driving breast cancer metastasis. Maria is very happy about this training opportunity to learn from the diverse expertise within the network, foster collaborations, and advance breast cancer metastasis research ultimately to improve patient outcomes.