Postdoctoral Researcher Medal Winner 2024
Carlos Pardo-Pastor
Carlos is a Research Fellow in Jody Rosenblatt’s group at the Randall Centre for Cell & Molecular Biophysics at King’s College London and the Francis Crick Institute.
He studied Human Biology at Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, where he also pursued an MSc in Biomedical Research and a PhD in Biomedicine working in the lab of Professor Miguel A. Valverde. There, he developed a new research line focused on the role of Piezo mechanically activated ion channels as key controllers of malignant traits (proliferation, migration, invasion, defence evasion) in cancer cells. For this work, he was awarded an Extraordinary PhD Prize.
For his postdoc, he joined Jody Rosenblatt’s group at the Randall Centre for Cell & Molecular Biophysics at King’s College London and now at the Francis Crick Institute. His work there has been funded by Human Frontiers and Marie Skłodowska-Curie individual fellowships and has focused on the role of Piezo1 in epithelial cell turnover. 
His most recent paper describes how this channel promotes EGFR endocytosis and signalling in response to mechanical inputs. Importantly, this involves phosphorylation of EGFR serine residues, unlike canonical, ligand-activated processes that signal via tyrosine phosphorylation. Importantly, this could help explain the pro-malignant effect of mechanical signalling and cancer resistance to tyrosine kinase inhibitors.
In addition, Carlos regularly participates in outreach activities like Shadow a Scientist or K+ days, aimed at local secondary school students to foster the next waves of UK-based scientists.
Carlos will be awarded the Medal and give a talk about his research during the 90th Harden Conference joint BSCB/Biochemical Society co-organised meeting cell migration meeting which will be held on 15-18 April 2024 at Birmingham, UK.
The Postdoc medal was established in 2020 to recognise early career researchers who have made a major contribution to UK/Ireland Cell Biology during their postdoctoral training. You can read more about the medal here.