Eva Hernando-Monge
Eva Hernando-Monge is affiliated with the NYU School of Medicine.
Brief Bio:
Eva Hernando Monge earned her PhD in Sciences (Molecular Biology) from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (Spain) in 1999. She completed postdoctoral training at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories. She joined the Department of Pathology at NYU School of Medicine in 2006 and is currently a tenured Professor. She has served as vice chair of the Department of Pathology, associate director for basic science at the NCI-designated Perlmutter Cancer Center, and assistant dean for research integration. Her laboratory investigates the molecular basis of cancer metastasis, leveraging clinically relevant murine models and access to patient samples. She has published more than 100 peer-reviewed articles, including high-impact studies in Nature, Nature Medicine, Nature Cell Biology, Cancer Discovery, and Cancer Cell.
The Hernando lab discovered that melanoma’s metastatic potential often arises from the retention or reactivation of transcriptional programs characteristic of neural crest cells—the multipotent, highly migratory progenitors that give rise to melanocytes. Her research has identified novel drivers of melanoma maintenance and progression, including the stress-response factor HSF1 (Kourtis, Moubarak et al., Nat Cell Biol 2015), BET epigenetic readers (Fontanals-Cirera, Hasson et al., Mol Cell 2017), the histone demethylase PHF8 (Moubarak et al., Science Adv 2022), the orphan nuclear receptor NR2F2 (Davalos et al., Nat Comm 2023), and the homeodomain transcription factor HOXD13 (Berico et al., Cancer Discov 2026). Additionally, her group identified non-coding RNAs that functionally contribute to various aspects of metastatic progression and therapeutic resistance, including microRNAs (Segura et al., PNAS 2009; Gaziel-Sovran et al., Cancer Cell 2011; Hanniford et al., JNCI 2015) and circular RNAs (Hanniford et al., Cancer Cell 202). The lab is also investigating the molecular basis of melanoma’s adaptation to the brain microenvironment. They have uncovered a novel connection between brain metastasis and neurodegenerative disorders, demonstrating a role for amyloid-beta in suppressing neuroinflammation during melanoma brain adaptation (Kleffman et al., Cancer Discov 2022).
Since its establishment, Dr. Hernando’s laboratory has been continuously funded by the National Cancer Institute (NCI/NIH), the Department of Defense (DOD), and prestigious foundations such as the American Cancer Society and the V Foundation. Dr. Hernando has served as a permanent member of the Cancer Molecular Pathogenesis (CAMP) NIH Study Section and is currently a member of the programmatic review committee of the DOD Melanoma Research Program, as well as review panels for the Melanoma Research Foundation, the Melanoma Research Alliance, and the V Foundation. In 2023, the Society of Melanoma Research awarded her the Estela Medrano Award for her important contributions to the field.
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