Date: 25 November 2026 (Wed)
Time: 4:00 – 5:00 pm
Venue: Lecture Theatre 3&4, LKS Faculty of Medicine, 21 Sassoon Road, Pokfulam, Hong Kong
Registration: https://hku.au1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_9Hr9kLIKJ0ChFoq
Host: Professor Kathryn Cheah

Ángela Nieto is Full Professor at the Institute of Neurosciences, a joint center of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) and Miguel Hernández University in Alicante, Spain. She directs the Cellular Plasticity in Disease and Brain Repair program and coordinates the CSIC National Cancer Hub. After completing her PhD at the Centro de Biología Molecular Severo Ochoa (Madrid), she pursued research at the Max Planck Institut für Psychiatrie in Munich and at the National Institute for Medical Research in London before establishing her independent group at the Cajal Institute in Madrid in 1993. She moved with her whole group to Alicante in 2004. Her work focuses on cellular plasticity in development and disease, with major contributions to understanding how reactivation of developmental programs drives cancer progression and organ degeneration. She is a member of the Spanish and European Academies of Sciences and a foreign member of the French and Latin American Academies. Her awards include the Mexico Prize (2017), Spain’s National Research Award (2019), and the L’Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science Award (Europe 2022).

One of the great mysteries of biology is how an entire human being can develop from a single cell. During embryonic development, cells multiply, move to the right place, and acquire the identity they need to form different tissues and organs. These remarkable processes are controlled by molecular programmes that guide the construction of the body. Once development is complete, most of these programmes are switched off and remain silent in healthy adults. Yet, surprisingly, some can be reactivated in disease. This happens in conditions such as organ degeneration and cancer. In tumours, developmental programmes can give cancer cells the ability to change, invade surrounding tissues and travel to distant organs, where they form metastases. Metastasis causes more than 90% of cancer-related deaths. Understanding how cells change and adapt during embryonic development can therefore teach us how diseases develop and, importantly, how we might stop them. By studying the embryo, we are discovering fundamental principles of cell plasticity that may open new ways to prevent cancer from spreading and to develop better treatments for other diseases.

All are welcome.