Adrian Baez-Ortega

Biography

Adrian joined the Transmissible Cancer Group as a PhD student from 2015 to 2019. Before moving to Cambridge, he obtained first-class honours BSc and MSc degrees in Computer Science at the University of La Laguna, Spain. He is currently a Nevile Research Fellow at Magdalene College, Cambridge, and a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Wellcome Sanger Institute, where he works with group leaders Peter Campbell and Iñigo Martincorena to investigate the biological processes moulding the somatic evolution of cells in healthy and diseased tissues.

For his doctoral work, which investigated the evolution of CTVT, a parasitic transmissible cancer that has affected dog populations for several millennia, Adrian received honours including the 2020 Harold M. Weintraub Graduate Student Award, the 2019 Kennel Club Charitable Trust Postgraduate Student Inspiration Award, and the 2017 Abcam Postgraduate Research Prize. His research on CTVT has been featured in prominent international media platforms, including WIRED, The Atlantic, The Times, Gizmodo, El País and The Hindu.

Adrian's side interests include literature, physics, philosophy, and the history of science. He also writes sporadically for his two blogs, divulgatum and in silico.

See Adrian's profile on Google Scholar and Publons.

Publications

Key publications:

The somatic evolution of the canine transmissible venereal tumour

Doctoral dissertation, University of Cambridge (2020)

Somatic evolution and global expansion of an ancient transmissible cancer lineage

Science, 365, eaau9923 (2019)

Recurrent horizontal transfer identifies mitochondrial positive selection in a transmissible cancer
A Strakova, TJ Nicholls*, A Baez-Ortega*, M Ní Leathlobhair, AT Sampson, K Hughes, IAG Bolton, K Gori, J Wang, I Airikkala-Otter, JL Allen, KM Allum, CL Arnold, L Bansse-Issa, TN Bhutia, JL Bisson, K Blank, C Briceño, A Castillo Domracheva, AM Corrigan, HR Cran, JT Crawford, SM Cutter, E Davis, KF de Castro, AB De Nardi, AP de Vos, L Delgadillo Keenan, EM Donelan, AR Espinoza Huerta, IA Faramade, M Fazil, E Fotopoulou, SN Fruean, F Gallardo-Arrieta, O Glebova, PG Gouletsou, RF Häfelin Manrique, JJGP Henriques, RS Horta, N Ignatenko, Y Kane, C King, D Koenig, A Krupa, SJ Kruzeniski, M Lanza-Perea, M Lazyan, AM Lopez Quintana, T Losfelt, G Marino, S Martínez Castañeda, MF Martínez-López, BM Masuruli, M Meyer, EJ Migneco, B Nakanwagi, KB Neal, W Neunzig, SJ Nixon, A Ortega-Pacheco, F Pedraza-Ordoñez, MC Peleteiro, K Polak, RJ Pye, JC Ramirez-Ante, JF Reece, J Rojas Gutierrez, H Sadia, SK Schmeling, O Shamanova, AG Sherlock, AE Steenland-Smit, A Svitich, LJ Tapia Martínez, I Thoya Ngoka, CG Torres, EM Tudor, MG van der Wel, BA Vițălaru, SA Vural, O Walkinton, AS Wehrle-Martinez, SAE Widdowson, I Zvarich, PF Chinnery, M Falkenberg, CM Gustafsson, EP Murchison
Nature Communications, 11 (1): 3059 (2020)
DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-16765-w
*Equal contribution

Pan-cancer analysis of whole genomes reveals driver rearrangements promoted by LINE-1 retrotransposition
B Rodriguez-Martin, EG Alvarez*, A Baez-Ortega*, J Zamora, F Supek, J Demeulemeester, M Santamarina, YS Ju, J Temes, D Garcia-Souto, H Detering, Y Li, J Rodriguez-Castro, A Dueso-Barroso, AL Bruzos, SC Dentro, MG Blanco, G Contino, D Ardeljan, M Tojo, ND Roberts, S Zumalave, PAW Edwards, J Weischenfeldt, M Puiggros, Z Chong, K Chen, EA Lee, JA Wala, K Raine, A Butler, SM Waszak, FCP Navarro, SE Schumacher, J Monlong, F Maura, N Bolli, G Bourque, M Gerstein, PJ Park, D Wedge, R Beroukhim, D Torrents, JO Korbel, I Martincorena, RC Fitzgerald, P Van Loo, HH Kazazian, KH Burns, PJ Campbell, JMC Tubio
Nature Genetics, 52(3): 306–319 (2020)
DOI: 10.1038/s41588-019-0562-0
*Equal contribution

sigfit: flexible Bayesian inference of mutational signatures
K Gori, A Baez-Ortega
bioRxiv, 372896 (2018)
DOI: 10.1101/372896

The origins and vulnerabilities of two transmissible cancers in Tasmanian devils
MR Stammnitz, THH Coorens, KC Gori, D Hayes, B Fu, J Wang, DE Martin-Herranz, LB Alexandrov, A Baez-Ortega, S Barthorpe, A Beck, F Giordano, GW Knowles, YM Kwon, G Hall, S Price, RJ Pye, JMC Tubio, HVT Siddle, S Singh Sohal, GM Woods, U McDermott, F Yang, MJ Garnett, Z Ning, EP Murchison
Cancer Cell, 33(4): 607–619 (2018)
DOI: 10.1016/j.ccell.2018.03.013