Nieto Lab

Our research group has been studying cell movements and plasticity more than 20 years. In particular, we have studied the epithelial to mesenchymal transition (EMT) during embryonic development and our main contribution has been the impact that the reactivation of this developmental program has in adult disease. We first studied the connection with tumour progression and, in the last ten years, we have extended our studies to pathologies related to bone development and homeostasis and also organ degeneration (EMBO J 2006, 2009; Dev Cell 2007, 2011; Cancer Cell 2012; Nat Med 2015).
Our interest in cell behaviour and cell movements in vivo led us to use the zebrafish as a fundamental model system, while we continue to use the chicken and mouse as additional experimental models. We also study cultured cells and samples from patients affected by the pathologies for which we have developed animal models.
With respect to cancer progression, we have shown that EMT/MET plasticity is required for migratory cancer cells to form metastases. In non-transformed cells, we have reported that the reactivation of a partial EMT is sufficient and required in fibrosis and importantly, established disease can be reversed by therapeutic treatment with EMT inhibitors. The latter opens new avenues in anti-fibrotic therapies. For recent reviews on our main theme see Nieto, Science, 2013, and Nieto et al., Cell 2016.

We are currently interested in (i)unveiling and testing novel regulatory networks that control cell movements and plasticity, (ii) identifying protein domains/modules that convey functional evolution of cell behaviour, (iii) following cell movements during embryonic development and cancer cells from the primary tumour to the metastatic foci.