Biography

Dr. Laura Belver (Madrid, Spain, 1983) graduated in Biology (2006) and Biochemistry (2011) at the Autonomous University of Madrid, where she also obtained her PhD on Molecular Biology in 2011, under the supervision of Dr. Almudena Ramiro (Spanish National Cancer Center, CNIO). Her PhD work on the role of microRNAs in preventing B-cell-driven autoimmunity (Belver et al, Immunity, 2010) has been highly cited since its publication and was awarded the IV Biogen-Idec Award for Young Scientist (2011). Concurrently, the defense of her Doctoral Thesis received the Outstanding Doctoral Thesis Award from the Autonomous University of Madrid (2011).

Dr. Belver joined the laboratory of Dr. Adolfo Ferrando at Columbia University (New York, NY, USA) in 2012. During her postdoctoral training, her work mainly focused on the study of the molecular mechanisms governing enhancer function in T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (T-ALL). Her results demonstrated for the first time a dominant role for oncogenic enhancer accessibility in leukemia development (Belver et al, Cancer Discovery, 2019). The relevance of this work has been broadly recognized in international conferences with the Acute Leukemia Forum Young Investigator Award (2019), the European School of Haematology Early Career International Award (2019), and the American Society of Hematology Abstract Achievement Award (2018).

In addition, during her training at Columbia University, Dr. Belver authored a highly-cited review on T-ALL genetics (Belver and Ferrando, Nature Reviews in Cancer, 2016), which is widely acknowledged as a reference for T-ALL researchers and clinicians, and made important contributions to other studies on T-ALL, chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) and angioimmunoblastic T-cell lymphoma (AITL). In 2020, Dr. Belver joined the Josep Carreras Leukemia Research Institute (IJC) as a Junior Group Leader.