Fernando de Miguel, PhD

As a graduate student, Fernando has been working in the characterization of alternative splicing events associated with lung cancer. In collaboration with other group, he participated in the development of an algorithm called ExonPointer which identified splicing cassette events from microarray platforms. This technique allowed him to detect many alternative splicing events caused by the proto-oncogene SRSF1 in lung cancer cell lines and studied their role in tumor progression (de Miguel FJ et al. Cancer Research. 2014). He later applied this technique to characterize alternative splicing events present in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) primary tumors. This allowed him to identify the splicing factor QKI as responsible of the majority of the events. He also showed that QKI was downregulated in NSCLC and that QKI expression was a prognostic marker for patients (de Miguel FJ et al. Molecular Oncology. 2016).

Fernando joined the Politi lab as a Postdoctoral Associate to study the mechanisms of acquired resistance to targeted therapies and immunotherapies from epigenetics approaches.