Irene Gañán Gomez

Dr. Irene Gañán Gomez is a Principal Investigator in the Myelodysplastic Neoplasia group at the Cancer Center Clínica Universidad de Navarra (CCUN) and affiliated with Cima Universidad de Navarra. She previously served as an Instructor in Research at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center (2019-2023) and completed postdoctoral work there (2014-2019).

• Education:
  • Bachelor's Degree in Pharmacy, University of Alcalá (2008)
  • Master's in Cell Signaling and Therapeutic Targets, University of Alcalá (2009)
  • PhD in Myeloid Hematologic Malignancies, University of Alcalá (2013)

Her research focuses on translational mechanisms in myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS), including immune evasion pathways, oncogenic dependencies in MDS stem cells, and therapeutic targeting of differentiation rewiring. She utilizes single-cell RNA sequencing and multi-omics approaches to identify vulnerabilities in disease progression.

Recent work highlights hematopoietic stem cell hierarchies as biomarkers for drug response in MDS/AML, NK cell dysfunction in pre-malignant immune escape, and ZMAT2/SMARCD3 as therapeutic targets for aberrant hematopoiesis.

• Scientific Awards:
  • Marie Sklodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship (2022)
  • Ramón y Cajal Prize (2022)
  • Andía Senior Talent Award (2023)
  • Kimberly Patterson Fellowship (2016)

She has co-directed doctoral theses on immune microenvironment in MDS and serves as a scientific manuscript reviewer for Q1 journals. Her work has been published in Clinical Cancer Research, Nature Communications, and Cell Reports, with over 1500 citations (h-index=15).