Dr Meritxell Huch is the winner of the Women in Cell Biology Early Career Medal, awarded by the British Society for Cell Biology. The annual award recognises an outstanding female cell biologist to serve as inspiring role models for the next generation.
Meritxell’s career started in Barcelona, Spain, where she obtained her PhD degree in Gene Therapy and Pancreatic Cancer at the Center for Genomic Regulation. She then moved to the Netherlands to join the laboratory of Professor Hans Clevers at the Hubrecht Institute for Developmental Biology and Stem Cell Research, in order to redirect the focus of her research into Adult Stem Cell Biology.
In the first stage of her postdoctoral research, she isolated, for the first time, the stem cells responsible for the rapid turnover of the adult stomach and proved that these adult stomach stem cells can be maintained and expanded in culture, forming “mini-stomachs” structures in vitro.
As senior postdoctoral researcher in the Clevers lab, she described that adult pancreas progenitors can be expanded long-term in vitro, an accomplishment never achieved before in the pancreas field.
In 2014, Meritxell established her independent lab at the Gurdon Institute, also becoming an Affiliate Investigator at the Cambridge Stem Cell Institute. She is currently working on elucidating the replicative potential of adult stem cells during tissue regeneration and disease.
The medal will be awarded at a medal lecture during the BSCB main spring meeting: The Dynamic Cell III in Manchester, 18th to 21st March 2018.