Aymara Mas Perucho

Senior principal investigator at the Carlos Simón Foundation and Established Researcher R3 at the INCLIVA Health Research Institute, Valencia, Spain, working within the Reproductive Medicine Research Group. My primary research interest lies in understanding the factors that contribute to the pathophysiology of benign and malignant gynaecologic tumours, including smooth muscle tumours and uterine ovarian cancer. To pursue this goal, I performed a two-year international postdoctoral fellowship at Augusta University in Georgia, USA, primarily working on uterine disorders. Afterthar completing the PhD training in La Fe Health Research Institute, Valencia, Spain, under Sara Borrel Grant (ISCIII). Over the past 10 years, I have made significant contributions in this field including the functional proof of concept for the existence of somatic stem cells (SSCs) in human myometrium and uterine leiomyomas (PMID: 24890270) based on Side Population (SP) methods (PMID: 22633281) and specific biomarkers (PMID: 25989979; PMID: 28395335). I have also collaborated with many groups of scientists to study the role of steroid hormone receptors (PMID: 27739139), signalling pathways (PMID: 30075150) and genetic (PMID: 25542836) / epigenetic alterations (PMID: 25922306) in the pathogenesis and growth of uterine leiomyomas, looking further into new approaches to improve the efficacy of gene therapy against these benign tumours (PMID: 27020169). With my team, I have also revealed through integrative genomic and transcriptomic profiling, the differential molecular signature of uterine leiomyoma versus leiomyosarcoma tumours (PMID: 31121144; PMID: 35216305), giving rise to several patent applications. Given my previous expertise in gynaecology, reproductive medicine, and genetics, I had the opportunity to establish and lead as a Principal Investigator (Miguel Servet grant, ISCIII) at the INCLIVA Health Research Institute, a new line of research focused on the molecular and cellular study of gynaecological tumours as an area of extension of precision medicine based on the development of cutting edge technologies, and thus contribute to the change of clinical interventions through the identification of molecular biomarkers that are associated with tumor growth and progression. My commitment to research excellence is demonstrated by established record of 9 research projects (5 of them as a PI) and 32 basic and translational publications in peer-reviewed journals, cited 1158 times with an H-Index of 20. I have participated in national and international grants, and I have been internationally awarded for the Society of Reproductive Investigation, SRI; and American Society of Reproductive Medicine, ASRM. Moreover, I’m guiding Medicine Degree Students in their final projects as well as PhD students, and participated in the Mediterranean Researchers' Night for the last two years to promote scientific vocation among the youngest and the general population. Nowadays, my team is trying to identify through high-throughput sequencing technologies, molecular biomarkers that are associated with tumour growth and progression, for the development of predictive models that allow noninvasive therapeutic and preventive strategies.