Marc Beltrà Bach Email & Phone Number

Since my enrollment as a PhD candidate in Prof. Paola Costelli’s lab at the University of Turin (Italy), I have dedicated most of my efforts to investigating the molecular drivers governing muscle wasting and mitochondrial dysfunction in cancer, specifically focusing on the role of microvesicles as carriers of miRNAs and other small non-coding RNAs (Pin, Beltrà et al., 2021. JCSM). In parallel, I have studied the impact of PGC-1α on skeletal muscle regeneration, with a particular focus on myogenic progenitors (Beltrà et al., 2022. iScience). Part of this latter study was conducted in collaboration with Prof. Maurilio Sampaolesi at the Stem Cell Institute of Leuven (Belgium), where I spend the last year of my PhD program to master several techniques related to the study of muscle stem cells. During this time abroad, I also had the opportunity to learn how to handle human iPSCs, directly contributing to the optimization of a myotube differentiation protocol (Costamagna et al., 2022. Cells). These 4 years of hard work concluded with my PhD dissertation, entitled “A journey into the skeletal muscle: from regenerative potential to cancer-induced wasting” in December 2019. I'm worked as a Postdoctoral Researcher under a research project led by Dr. Fabio Penna aimed to improve muscle energy metabolism (focusing on mitochondria) by using novel therapeutic strategies to ameliorate aging- and cancer-related sarcopenia. Our research focused on counteracting NAD+ depletion in cancer cachexia to subsequently improve oxidative metabolism in the skeletal muscle (Beltrà et al., 2023, Nature Communications)

Listed skills include Animal Models, Molecular Biology, Mirna, Cell Culture, and 8 others.