Maite Huarte

Director of the DNA and RNA Medicine Division at CIMA, University of Navarra, Spain

Maite Huarte, current Director of the DNA and RNA Medicine Division at CIMA, Univ. of Navarra, Spain, earned her PhD at Autonomous Univ. of Madrid, focusing on the influenza virus interaction with the infected cell. During her postdoctoral tenure at Harvard Medical School, she identified novel histone demethylase enzymes, uncovering their impact on chromatin and cell identity. Later, at the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, she pioneered research on long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) in gene regulation. Since 2011, her group explores the contributions of lncRNAs to gene regulatory mechanisms, revealing their pivotal roles in cancer pathways such as p53 and their influence on chromatin and cell homeostasis. In recent years, they have explored the noncoding functions of RNA in the regulation of DNA replication, revealing RNA significance in preserving genomic stability.