Cell Division and Cancer

The Cell Division and Cancer Group (CNIO), led by Dr. Marcos Malumbres, is interested in understanding the relevance of mitotic regulators not only during the cell cycle but also in physiological processes in different cell types or tissues. Mitosis is mostly regulated by posttranscriptional mechanisms such as protein phosphorylation or protein degradation. We are therefore interested in the study of mitotic kinases and phosphatases as well as regulatory complexes involved in ubiquitin-dependent degradation of proteins. The control of proper chromosome segregation by these regulators is essential to prevent genomic instability and may have critical implications in the generation of aneuploidy, an unbalance in the number of chromosomes commonly found in human tumor cells. Thus, we are using mouse models with genetic alterations in several mitotic regulators to gain insights into their relevance in vivo and their possible use in cancer therapy.