BIO Manuel Serrano

Manuel Serrano

Spanish National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO), Madrid ES  |  CV

Manuel Serrano leads the Tumour Suppression Group at the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO). Serrano’s major research achievements include the discovery, cloning and characterisation of tumour suppressor p16, which defined a new class of cell cycle regulators and was soon acknowledged as one of the main tumour suppressors. In addition, characterisation of p16 paved the way to another paramount tumour suppressor discovery, p19Arf, a key activator of p53. He also established the concept of “oncogene induced senescence” as a tumour suppression mechanism. This concept rapidly became an intense research topic in many laboratories and has since been widely accepted. Serrano pioneered the generation of cancer-resistant mice with the so-called “super-mice”. This work demonstrated the possibility of increasing cancer resistance in the absence of deleterious secondary effects. Moreover, it revealed that tumour suppressor genes not only protect against cancer but also against ageing, in general thanks to the capacity of these genes to eliminate cellular damage. He also characterised the role of p16 and p19Arf as barriers during the process of nuclear reprogramming to pluripotent stem cells. A recent highlight from his group is the characterization of efficient and highly plastic reprogramming of somatic cells in vivo.

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