Dr. Nuria Montserrat became interested in organ regeneration and stem cells during her master and PhD training that finished in 2006. The same year she got a Postdoctoral fellowship from the Fundaçao para a Ciência e Tecnología (Portugal). In 2007 she was hired as a post-doctoral researcher at the Hospital of Santa Creu i Sant Pau in Barcelona.
In 2008 she moved to the Center of Regenerative Medicine of Barcelona (CMRB) as a research associate. There, Dr. Montserrat participated in developing strategies for the generation and banking of new induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs).
In 2010 she first co-authored how to reprogram cord blood stem cells for the first time (Nature Protocols, 2010). Then she reasoned that iPSCs could be obtained by means of safe strategies with new factors. The work resulted in a high-impact publication in Cell Stem Cell (2013), in where she was the first co-author. She also collaborated in other projects aimed to characterize the genomic integrity of human iPSCs (Nature 2012) as well as in the differentiation of iPSCs towards different lineages (Stem Cells 2011; Nature 2012; Nature Methods 2012, Nature Cell Biology 2013, Nature Communications 2014). Dr. Montserrat has also participated in the generation of platforms for the study of disease progression by means of iPSCs (Nature 2012, Nature Communications 2014).
More recently, she has first co-authored how the reactivation of endogenous pathways can be artificially reactivated and promote heart regeneration in mammals (Cell Stem Cell, 2014). Her expertise in the fields of somatic reprogramming and organ regeneration helped her to develop a massive project was been selected for funding from the European Research Council within the ERC Starting Grant call of 2014.