Julio Castaño obtained his Bachelor degree in Biology from the University of Barcelona. In 2000 he was admitted to the Biochemistry and Molecular Biology PhD program, supported by MEC fellowship, at Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona under the supervision of Dr. Mireia Duñach and Dr. Antonio García de Herreros. During his PhD thesis he studied the role of Wnt pathway and adherents junctions in colorectal cáncer. In 2006 he moved to CIBBIM, at the Vall d’Hebron Hospital (Barcelona) for a post-doc in Dr. Simo Schwartz Jr. laboratory supported by Juan de la Cierva fellowship, studying the epigenetics mechanisms involved in chromatin remodeling and gene expression. Then he joined the Center of Regenerative Medicine of Barcelona (CMR[B]) as Senior Laboratory technician from 2008 to 2011. Mainly he was involved in a project focused on the role of histone modifying enzymes in stem cell pluripotency and differentiation. From 2011 to 2013, he worked at Inbiomed Foundation, at the Laboratory of Hematopoiesis and Blood disorders, as Lab Manager-Staff Scientist. Here, he not only contributed to start and organize the new Laboratory of Hematopoiesis and Blood disorders but also he was involved in a project focused to convert directly hematopoietic stem cells into induced neurons. He moved to Josep Carreras Leukaemia Research Institute in 2013, in the new Department of Stem Cells, Mesenchymal Cancer and Development as Research Associate-Lab Manager. In 2017 Julio joined CMR[B] associated with a PERIS research project “Cardiopoyesis con biomatrices para regenerar la cicatriz post-infarto: From bench to bedside (first-in-man trial)”, funded by the Department of Health of the Generalitat of Catalonia. Within this project, Julio will develop more efficient protocols for cardiomyocyte differentiation from iPSC, and generate CRIPSR/Cas9-edited lines of iPSC to help this process.

Cell Biology, Virology, Molecular Biological Techniques