Maria Blasco

Background

Maria Blasco is Director of the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO) in Madrid and head of its Telomeres and Telomerase Group. She trained with Carol Greider (Nobel laureate for telomere biology) and is one of the leading telomere researchers worldwide.

Key contributions

• Generated and characterised telomerase-knockout mouse models, showing the role of telomeres in tissue regeneration and cancer.
• Showed that AAV-TERT gene therapy in adult and old mice extends lifespan ~24% without raising cancer incidence.
• Identified roles of telomeres in stem-cell function.
• Developed telomere-length measurement techniques.

Influence

Blasco’s lab provides much of the mechanistic and proof-of-concept work for telomerase-activation strategies in mammalian aging.

Related entries

Telomere attrition, Telomerase, Telomere length.