Sonia Forcales

Sonia Forcales obtained her PhD at the University of Barcelona studying a mechanism of INFg-induced expression in macrophages. She obtained a Marie Curie fellowship to pursue a post-doctoral study on p38 kinase-dependent transcriptional control of myogenic differentiation at Fondazione Andrea Cesalpino, Rome. Her work showed the recruitment of p38 kinase to gene promoters and that p38 activity is required to remodel chromatin by SWI/SNF complex at myogenic regulatory regions (Simone C at al., Nat Genet. 2004 Jul;36(7):738-43). During her second postdoctoral time in the laboratory of Dr. Pier Lorenzo Puri at the Sanford Burnham Institute (2006-2010) in La Jolla, she continued to work on the mechanisms targeting SWI/SNF complex to myogenic loci (Forcales et al., EMBO J. 2012 Jan18;31(2):301-16) and on embryonic stem cells a source for myogenic progenitors. In 2010 she joined the Institute of Predictive and Personalized Medicine of Cancer in Badalona, as a research associate in the group of Manuel Perucho, and studies the contribution of chromatin, with special focus in SWI/SNF alterations, in colorectal cancer disease and chemoresistance. From March 2017 she is also associate professor at the Pathology and Experimental Therapeutics department from the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Barcelona.