Lab Members

Manuel Collado Rodríguez
Leader

Manuel Collado is a CNB-CSIC investigator temporarily established at CiMUS, the Molecular Medicine and Chronic Disease Research Center of USC, and also part of the Health Research Institute of Santiago de Compostela (IDIS). He leads the Cell Senescence, Cancer and Aging Laboratory since 2012. We will be moving shortly to CiMUS premises. Before that, he obtained his PhD at UAM in Madrid in 1997 for work done at CNB (CSIC-UAM) and was a postdoctoral student, first at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research in London, UK, and later at NYU Medical School and at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, USA. He returned to Madrid, Spain, in 2001 to join Manuel Serrano´s group at CNB. The laboratory moved in 2003 to the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO), where he worked for almost 9 years as staff scientist.

During his career, he has published close to 80 papers, several of them in high impact journal such as Nature (3 articles), Cell, Cancer Cell, Cell Stem Cell, PNAS, EMBO J, Genes & Development, Nature Communications, Aging Cell, Cancer Research, etc. He is also the author of some the most cited reviews in his field published in Nature Reviews Cancer (2 reviews) and Cell (2 reviews).

Along the years, his scientific work has been mainly focused on cancer and in particular tumor suppression mechanisms, working mainly on cell senescence. On this subject he has published more than 30 articles, among them the first in vivo description of oncogene-induced senescence in Nature (more than 1000 citations) or the identification of programmed cell senescence during embryo development, and more recently the description of a new family of senolytic compounds, the Cardiac Glycosides (Nature Communications).

Sabela Da Silva Álvarez
Postdoc fellow

Biologist graduated in 2012 at the University of Vigo. In 2013 she got a Master´s degree in Biomedical Research. She joined the Stem Cells in Cancer and Aging Laboratory, in the Clinical University Hospital of Santiago de Compostela, as a PhD student.  She obtained her PhD in 2019 studying cell senescence and its relationship with physiological and pathological processes. Since 2020, postdoctoral fellow of Xunta de Galicia.

Víctor Núñez Quintela
PhD student

BSc in Biology at University of Vigo, MSc in Genomics and Genetics at University of Santiago de Compostela. His research is focused on the use of cellular reprogramming to better understand cancer and aging. In 2021 he obtained a predoctoral fellowship from Xunta de Galicia.

Lucía Antelo Iglesias
PhD student

Nurse graduated in 2018 at the University of Santiago de Compostela. In 2019 she got a Master’s degree in Biomedical Research at the same University, at which point she decided to continue her work at the Cell Senescence, Cancer and Aging Laboratory in order to get a PhD. She receives funding from Xunta de Galicia.

María Pilar Picallos Rabina
Postdoc fellow

Nurse graduated in 2017 at the University of Santiago de Compostela after obtaining the academic title of Superior Technician of Clinical Laboratory in 2013. In 2018 she got a Master´s degree in Biomedical Research at the University of Santiago de Compostela working at the Stem Cells in Cancer and Aging Laboratory in the Clinical University Hospital of Santiago de Compostela. She obtained her PhD in 2023 studying the use of cellular senescence and senolytics in the treatment of cancer and aging. Since that year, postdoctoral fellow of Xunta de Galicia.

Patricia Lado-Fernández
PhD student

Biologist graduated in 2018 at the University of Santiago de Compostela. That year she joined the Laboratory of Cell Senescence, Cancer and Aging in the Clinical University Hospital of Santiago de Compostela. In 2019 she got a Master´s degree in Genomics and Genetics at the same University and in 2020 she received a PhD fellowship from Xunta de Galicia. Now she continues her work in the lab as a PhD student. Her research is focused on studying the regulation of the pluripotency factor SOX2 in cancer cells.

Valentín Estévez Souto
PhD student

Biologist graduated in 2018 at University of Santiago de Compostela. In 2019 he joined ColladoLab in the Clinical University Hospital of Santiago de Compostela and obtained his Master´s Degree in Genomics and Genetics at the same university. Then he decided to continue his work to get a PhD in Molecular Medicine. His research is focused on the senescence-associated secretory phenotype and intercellular communication in the context of cancer, with a special interest in extracellular vesicles.

Miguel Ángel Prados
PhD Student

Biochemist graduated in 2021 at the University of Granada. In 2022 he obtained his Master’s degree in Molecular Biomedicine at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, concurrently participating in a CSIC JAE Intro scholarship program at the Centro de Biología Molecular Severo Ochoa (CBMSO). That year, he joined the Laboratory of Cell Senescence, Cancer and Aging in the Clinical University Hospital of Santiago de Compostela to start his PhD with a Xunta de Galicia fellowship. His research is focused on the discovery of new compounds with senolytic activity.

Alejandro Failde-Fiestras
PhD Student

Biotechnologist graduated in 2022 at the University of Santiago de Compostela. In that year, he joined the Laboratory of Cell Senescence, Cancer, and Aging at the Clinical University Hospital of Santiago de Compostela. In 2023, he got a Master's degree in Biomedical Research at the same university. Currently, he continues his research as a PhD student, focusing on exploring the relationship between apoptosis and senescence, unraveling their implications in both physiological and pathological processes.