Unidad
METABOLISMO Y REGULACIÓN GÉNICA
Descripción
The contribution of diet and nutrients to human health has been clearly established. Consumption of hypercaloric and proinflammatory diets, constitutes a major health problem, promoting obesity and its associated comorbidities such as diabetes, liver disease, or different types of cancer. On the other side, specific nutrients and dietary interventions such as intermittent fasting regimens can have a protective effect. However, the molecular mechanisms underlying these detrimental or protective effects are not fully understood.
Pre-mRNA alternative splicing is a fundamental cellular process that expands the transcriptional complexity and regulatory potential of our genome. However, pre-mRNA alternative splicing involves a complex mechanism, and its dysregulation has been implicated in a growing number of human pathologies.
Our short-term goal is to understand how pre-mRNA alternative splicing contributes to the metabolic regulation in health and disease, and whether if this process is influenced by pro- and anti-inflammatory diets. This work has an emphasis on hepatocellular carcinoma (one of the deadliest types of cancer), and neurofibromatosis type 1, a rare disease with unmet clinical needs.
Our long-term goal is to leverage on our findings to develop advanced therapeutics for these pathologies, including therapeutic oligonucleotides (ASO, SSO, saRNA and RNAi) and exosome-based gene replacement therapies.
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