19th Ave New York, NY 95822, USA

Cancer Cell Cycle Group

Our lab focuses on the basic mechanisms that control cell differentiation and proliferation, and their implications in pathology. We are interested in deciphering the mechanisms that drive tumour cell proliferation, with a patient-focused perspective, and the therapeutic opportunities of inhibiting the activity of critical cell cycle regulators in cancer.

Past research in the last years has led to the approval of inhibitors of specific cell cycle regulators (cyclin-dependent kinases 4 and 6; CDK4/6) in breast cancer therapy. Inhibiting CDK4/6, along with hormonotherapy is the current standard of care in advanced oestrogen receptor-positive breast cancer. Yet, these inhibitors are not efficient in other tumour types and, despite the extensive analysis of the cell cycle in the last years, we still do not understand how cells drive the cell cycle in the absence of CDK4/6 activity.

Our lab has contributed to several aspects of the understanding of the control of cell cycle control using a variety of biochemical and genetic tools. We are now very interested in applying this expertise to the real-world scenario of patients in the urgent need of efficacious therapies. Recent efforts in our lab focus on the identification of new cancer targets, understanding mechanisms of resistance to current drugs, and validation of new therapeutic strategies. We are also interested in the alterations that cell cycle deregulation imposes in tumour cells and therapeutic possibilities that could discriminate between tumour and normal cells. We are interested in novel therapeutic opportunities in genomically unstable tumours, as well as generating a platform of patient-derived samples in which genetics, biochemistry and single-cell studies can be combined to develop and test novel therapeutic strategies to be translated to the clinic.

Marcos Malumbres
Group Leader
  • Mechanisms of resistance to CDK4/6 inhibitors: biomarkers and combinatorial therapies
  • Novel therapeutic approaches based on unconventional CDKs
  • Combination between core cell cycle and DNA damage-targeted therapies
  • Self-renewal of pluripotent cells and regeneration
Group Leader
Marcos Malumbres
Senior Scientist
Begoña Hurtado
Research Assistants
Irene Díaz
Sandra Díez Ribas
Graduate Students
Gloria C. Bonel
Mariona Cubells
Fátima Guerra
Luis R. López
Enrique Nogueira
Bioinformatician
Agustín Sánchez Belmonte

Dhital B, Santasusagna S, Kirthika P, Xu M, Li P, Carceles-Cordon M, Soni RK, Li Z, Hendrickson RC, Schiewer MJ, Kelly WK, Sternberg CN, Luo J, Lujambio A, Cordon-Cardo C, Alvarez-Fernandez M, Malumbres M, Huang H, Ertel A, Domingo-Domenech J, Rodriguez-Bravo V. (2023) Harnessing transcriptionally driven chromosomal instability adaptation to target therapy-refractory lethal prostate cancer. Cell Rep Med. Feb 7:100937. [Pubmed]

Mouron S, Bueno MJ, Muñoz M, Torres R, Rodríguez S, Apala JV, Silva J, Sánchez-Bayona R, Manso L, Guerra J, Rodriguez-Lajusticia L, Malon D, Malumbres M, Quintela-Fandino M. p27Kip1 V109G as a biomarker for CDK4/6 inhibitors indication in hormone receptor-positive breast cancer. JNCI Cancer Spectr. 2023 Mar 1;7(2):pkad014. doi: 10.1093/jncics/pkad014. PMID: 36806942; PMCID: PMC10035773.

(all of them are also here: https://malumbreslab.org/publications/)

A new platform to predict response to CDK4/6 inhibitors in metastatic breast cancer patients

Reference: DTS21/00132
Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación
Award Period: 01/2022-12/2023.
PI: M. Malumbres.

Therapeutic evaluation of the Cdk14-18 subfamily in advanced breast cancer (breastCDKS)

Reference: PID2021-128726OB-I00
Ministerio de Ciencia, Innov. y Univ.
Award Period: 1/2022-31/2024
IP: M. Malumbres.

Implementing CDK16-18 targeted therapies for cancer treatment

PDC2022-133408-I00
Ministerio de Ciencia, Innov. y Univ.
Award Period: 1/2023-31/2024
IP: M. Malumbres.

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