Understanding how cancer spreads and why it may return

David Olmeda Casadomé is a Tenured Scientist (Científico Titular) at CSIC and Principal Investigator of the Drivers and Biomarkers of Metastasis Lab at the Instituto de Investigaciones Biomédicas Sols-Morreale (IIBM, CSIC-UAM). He holds a PhD in Biochemistry from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. His career integrates molecular biology, mouse genetics, advanced in vivo imaging and systems biology to study metastasis as a systemic process, from local interactions between tumour cells and their microenvironment to the formation of pre-metastatic niches in distant organs.

He began his research career in Amparo Cano's group at IIBM, studying E-cadherin loss and the role of Snail transcription factors in epithelial–mesenchymal transition. In 2007 he joined the CNIO Mouse Genome Editing Unit led by Sagrario Ortega, developing expertise in mouse genetics and in vivo visualisation of pathological lymphangiogenesis through the MetAlert models. From 2010, as a Staff Scientist in María S. Soengas's Melanoma Group, he led work identifying midkine as a driver of the pre-metastatic niche and showing that tumours can activate distant lymphovascular networks before metastatic colonisation, published in Nature in 2017.

He subsequently led studies linking midkine signalling to immunosuppressive reprogramming of the tumour microenvironment and the recruitment of myeloid-derived suppressor cells, published in Nature Medicine and EMBO Molecular Medicine. In 2023 he established his independent laboratory at IIBM to decipher the spatiotemporal regulation of pre-metastatic niches and translate these mechanisms into biomarkers and therapeutic opportunities. His work has been recognised, among other distinctions, with the 2017 Constantes y Vitales Award for best biomedical publication and the Society for Melanoma Research's Christopher J. Marshall Award.

Hello! My name is Agapi, and I am a PhD candidate. I come from a molecular biology background, having obtained my BSc from the University of Crete in 2022. Since then, I have shifted my focus towards bioinformatics and biomedical data analysis. In 2025, I completed my MSc in Bioinformatics at Uppsala University in Sweden, where I built a strong foundation in the computational tools needed to explore the complexity of biological data.

Throughout my academic journey, my research experience has been diverse but consistently focused on cancer research. During my undergraduate studies, I delved into cellular and molecular oncology, gaining hands-on experience in molecular diagnostics, 3D cell culture, confocal imaging and cancer mechanobiology. During my master’s degree, I expanded into programming, statistics, machine learning and AI, aiming to build a strong foundation in computational oncology. I have contributed to cancer-related projects involving neural networks, rule-based machine learning, dynamic modelling and genetic algorithms. I am particularly fascinated by the power of data science to unravel the complexities of cancer processes.

In my doctoral research, I focus on understanding how cancer cells interact with their metastatic microenvironment, with a particular interest in the role of lymphatic vasculature. My project combines single-cell imaging and morphodynamic analyses to explore these processes from a new angle. I am excited to contribute to research that aims to deepen our understanding of metastasis and could support the development of more effective, personalised therapies.