Esteban Ballestar's Biography

Esteban Ballestar, Leader, The Bellvitge Institute for Biomedical Research

Esteban Ballestar is leader of the Chromatin and Disease Laboratory at the Cancer Epigenetics and Biology Programme (PEBC) of the Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute (IDIBELL) in Barcelona, Spain. Ballestar obtained his Ph.D. degree from the University of Valencia, specialising in chromatin and histone modifications. He then worked as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the National Institutes of Health, (Bethesda, MD, USA) where he investigated associations between elements of the chromatin machinery and methylated DNA. Later Esteban Ballestar worked as a senior scientist at the CNIO Cancer Epigenetics Laboratory, where his principal area of research was the study of the implication of chromatin factors in epigenetic alterations in human cancer. His current research is devoted to the establishment of different mechanisms of epigenetic deregulation in the context of autoimmune disease and different immune cell differentiation models. Recent findings from his research group include the identification of a signature of DNA methylation alterations associated with systemic lupus erythematosus. Author of more than eighty peer-reviewed manuscripts in biomedical sciences, he is also a member of numerous international scientific societies and reviewer for many journals and national and international funding agencies.