Dr. Guarné's Biography

Dr. Guarné obtained her PhD in 1999 in Biochemistry studying the functions of one of the key proteases from the foot-and-mouth disease virus at the Institute of Molecular Biology of Barcelona (CSIC, Spain) in the laboratories of Drs. Ignacio Fita and Josep Tormo. After her graduation, she underwent a four-year postdoctoral training in Dr. Wei Yang’s laboratory at the National Institutes of Health (Bethesda, Maryland), first as a NATO and later as a HFSPO fellow. It was at NIH that Dr. Guarné developed a strong interest on understanding how DNA mismatch repair proteins work at a molecular level.

Since she joined the Department of Biochemistry and Biomedical Sciences at McMaster University in 2003, Dr. Guarné’s research has focused on the study of proteins that regulate DNA replication, chromosome segregation and DNA mismatch repair. To understand how these processes work, research in Dr. Guarné’s laboratory lies at the interface between structural biology, cancer biology and biochemistry.

Dr. Guarné has been awarded several investigator awards including the NIH Fellows Award for Research Excellence, the New Investigator Award from CIHR and the Early Researcher Award from the Ministry of Research and Innovation.

Dr. Guarné is an active member of the American Crystallographic Association and serves as a councillor on the Board of Directors of the Canadian Society of Biochemistry, Molecular and Cellular Biology.

Dr. Alba Guarné