Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte

Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte (born 1960 in Hellín - Albacete) has been a professor in the Gene Expression Laboratories at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California since 1993. In 2004, he helped to establish the Center for Regenerative Medicine in Barcelona and was its Director between 2004 and January 13, 2014. While maintaining the lab on site at Salk, in 2012, Dr. Izpisua Belmonte joined other labs from Salk, Sanford-Burnham, La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology, and UCSD, as the inaugural occupants of the Sanford Consortium for Regenerative Medicine in La Jolla.

Izpisua graduated from the University of Valencia, Spain with a Bachelor’s degree in Pharmacy and Science. He then earned a Master’s degree in Pharmacology from the same university before moving on to complete his Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Pharmacology at the University of Bologna, Italy and the University of Valencia, Spain. He followed that with a stage as a postdoctoral fellow in different institutions, including the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), in Heidelberg, Germany and University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), Los Angeles, USA prior to moving to the Salk Institute in 1993.

His work has been influential in our understanding of the cellular and molecular basis of how an organism with millions of cells develops from a single cell embryo after fertilization. These discoveries may have implications for disease treatment, as well as organ and tissue regeneration and aging. He is the lead author of a 2015 paper revealing a promising new approach to influence aging.

Dr. Izpisua Belmonte has received several awards and honors over the years, including the William Clinton Presidential Award, the Pew Scholar Award, the Gold Medal of the Junta Castilla-La Mancha, the 2016 National Institutes of Health Director's Pioneer Award and the Roger Guillemin Endowed Nobel Chair. A notable honor was the naming of a secondary school, Instituto Enseñanza Secundaria (IES) Izpisua Belmonte, in his hometown of Hellín, Albacete, Spain.