Nuria Lopez Bigas

IRB Barcelona

Biography

Nuria Lopez-Bigas is an ICREA Research Professor at the Institute for Research in Biomedicine in Barcelona. Her lab combines strong expertise in biology and bioinformatics, and it is focused on the study of cancer. They have made major contributions in the identification of cancer genes and cancer driver mutations across tumor types and in understanding the mutational processes leading to the accumulation of mutations in cells.

Nuria Lopez-Bigas was elected member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) in 2016, Fellow of the International Society of Computational Biology (ISCB) in 2021, and member of the Spanish Royal Society of Sciences in 2024. In 2025 she received the Jaume I Award in Biomedical Research. She currently leads the European project CGI-Clinics (cgiclinics.eu), which joins cancer hospitals across Europe to develop and implement a data-driven cancer genome interpretation for clinical decision making. She co-leads the Cancer Grand Challenge project PROMINENT (https://www.cancergrandchallenges.org/prominent).

Relevant Publications

Sex and smoking bias in the selection of somatic mutations in human bladder

Calvet F., Blanco Martinez-Illescas R., Muiños F., Tretiakova M., Latorre-Esteves E. S., Fredrickson J., Andrianova M., Pellegrini S., Rosendahl Huber A., Ramis-Zaldivar J. E., An S. C., Thieme E., Kohrn B. F., Grau M. L., Gonzalez-Perez A., Lopez-Bigas N., Risques R. A., Nature (2025).

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09521-x
Five latent factors underlie response to immunotherapy

Usset J., Rosendahl Huber A., Andrianova M. A., Batlle E., Carles J., Cuppen E., Elez E., Felip E., Gómez-Rey M., Lo Giacco D., Martinez-Jimenez F., Muñoz-Couselo E., Siu L. L., Tabernero J., Vivancos A., Muiños F., Gonzalez-Perez A., Lopez-Bigas N., Nature Genetics (2024).

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41588-024-01899-0
Origins of Second Malignancies in Children and Mutational Footprint of Chemotherapy in Normal Tissues

Sánchez-Guixé M., Muiños F., Pinheiro-Santin M., González-Huici V., Rodriguez-Hernandez C. J., Avgustinova A., Lavarino C., González-Pérez A., Mora J., López-Bigas N., Cancer Discovery (2024).

https://doi.org/10.1158/2159-8290.CD-23-1186
Discovering the drivers of clonal hematopoiesis

Pich O., Reyes-Salazar I., Gonzalez-Perez A., Lopez-Bigas N., Nature Communications (2022).

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-31878-0
In silico saturation mutagenesis of cancer genes

Muiños F., Martínez-Jiménez F., Pich O., Gonzalez-Perez A., Lopez-Bigas N., Nature (2021).

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03771-1
A compendium of mutational cancer driver genes

Martínez-Jiménez F., Muiños F., Sentís I., Deu-Pons J., Reyes-Salazar I., Arnedo-Pac C., Mularoni L., Pich O., Bonet J., Kranas H., Gonzalez-Perez A., Lopez-Bigas N., Nature Reviews Cancer (2020).

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41568-020-0290-x
Systematic analysis of alterations in the ubiquitin proteolysis system reveals its contribution to driver mutations in cancer

Martínez-Jiménez F., Muiños F., Lopez-Arribillaga E., Lopez-Bigas N., Gonzalez-Perez A., Nature Cancer (2020).

https://doi.org/10.1038/s43018-019-0001-2
The mutational footprints of cancer therapies

Pich O., Muiños F., Lolkema M. P., Steeghs N., Gonzalez-Perez A., Lopez-Bigas N., Nature Genetics (2019).

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41588-019-0525-5
Somatic and Germline Mutation Periodicity Follow the Orientation of the DNA Minor Groove around Nucleosomes

Pich O., Muiños F., Sabarinathan R., Reyes-Salazar I., Gonzalez-Perez A., Lopez-Bigas N., Cell (2018).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2018.10.004
Nucleotide excision repair is impaired by binding of transcription factors to DNA

Sabarinathan R., Mularoni L., Deu-Pons J., Gonzalez-Perez A., Lopez-Bigas N., Nature (2016).

https://doi.org/10.1038/nature17661