Pilar Blancafort 35th Lorne Cancer Conference 2023

Pilar Blancafort

Dr. Pilar Blancafort is an Associate Professor of Cancer Epigenetics at The University of Western Australia and a laboratory head at The Harry Perkins Institute of Medical Research. Pilar is currently the head of the cancer program at the Harry Perkins Institute of Medical Research. She conducted undergraduate studies at the University of Barcelona; she obtained her PhD in Biochemistry at the University of Montreal; she conducted post-doctoral studies at The Scripps Research Institute. In 2005, she established her laboratory at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, where she obtained tenure in 2010. In 2012, she moved her lab to the University of Western Australia. She obtained a Cancer Council of Western Australia, Australian Research Council Future Fellowship and she is currently a Wesfarmers fellow in women’s cancers. Pilar has developed novel approaches to manipulate specifically the epigenetic state of oncogenes and tumour suppressor genes, with a main focus on CRISPR/Cas systems for the epigenetic reprogramming of cancer phenotypes. In her seminar Pilar will describe some of the genome engineering approaches and delivery systems for targeting pro-mesenchymal transcription factors driving epithelial to mesenchymal transition in triple negative breast cancers.