Director of Hematology and Cell Therapy Department
Clinica Universidad de Navarra, Spain
Professor Prosper graduated from the University of Navarra in 1989 and after his residency and PhD (1994), he completed a fellowship and postdoctoral training at the University of Minnesota. Relocated to the Clinica Universidad de Navarra in 2001, he was responsible for the development of the Cell Therapy program, where he became head of the Hematology Department in 2003. Professor Prosper´s principal research interest and key discoveries have been focused on several specific areas 1. Molecular bases of the hematological malignancies: Within this research line, we have focused on a) Determination of the role of epigenetic alterations in the prognosis and pathogenesis of hematological malignancies: We have contributed to prove that hypermethylation of different genes has a prognostic role in ALL, and to identify new routes involved in the disease regulated by DNA methylation and histone modifications. b) Determine the role played by DNA methylation, histone modifications and transcriptional regulation in normal hematopoietic differentiation and in lymphoid neoplasms, particularly MM where he has defined the epigenome and methylome of patients with MM. c) Determination of the role of transcriptional deregulation in myeloid malignancies, with an integrative study of diseases such as MDS and AML, studying both hematopoietic progenitors as well as the bone marrow microenvironment, through lowinput NGS technologies (RNA-seq, ATAC-seq, ChIP-seq) that allow for the study of minor populations, as well as single-cell RNA and DNA-seq approaches that allow to study the heterogeneity of these and other diseases. d) Over the last years, we have focused on identifying novel epigenetic drugs as potential novel treatments for hematological tumors: Specifically, and in collaboration with Dr. Julen Oyarzabal and Dr. Antonio Pineda's group at our institution, we have developed several novel chemical series of epigenetic inhibitors that are being validated in myeloid and lymphoid tumors, as well as bladder