VIRGINIA PILAR
GARCÍA-YÉBENES MENA

Virginia G. de Yebenes (Detroit, USA 1972) obtained her BS degree in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid in 1995. De Yebenes received her PhD and First Class Honours distinction from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid in 2002. Dr. de Yebenes joined Almudena R. Ramiro’s group at the Spanish National Oncology Research Center (CNIO) as a postdoctoral fellow. In 2009 de Yebenes was awarded a “Ramon y Cajal” research position and her scientific career was acknowledged with an I3 outstanding research trajectory certificate from the Spanish National Evaluation Agency in 2014. She joined the Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Cardiovasculares (CNIC) in 2011, where she worked as a Research Associate in the B Cell Biology Lab until her appointment as Associate Professor at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM) in 2019. During this time as postdoctoral and senior researcher, she developed a new research line focused in the characterization of the role of microRNAs in the regulation of mature Germinal Center (GC) B cell biology and oncogenic transformation processes. Dr. de Yebenes developed new state-of-the-art microRNA gain and loss of function mouse models, including “microRNA sponges” bone marrow chimeras, microRNA transgenics and knock-ins, and conditional knock-outs. These works showed that microRNAs are key regulators of the GC response and led to the identification of microRNAs that play essential roles in: i) the regulation of GC molecular processes (i.e. miR-181 though AID expression regulation), ii) suppressing GC-derived neoplasic transformation (i.e. miR-28 is a GC tumor-suppressors through BCR signaling regulation) and iii) promoting GC transformation (i.e. miR-217 is a GC oncogene that regulates DNA damage response and Bcl6 expression). As a Research Associate, Dr. de Yebenes directly contributed to the scientific mentoring of some of the students in the B cell Lab laboratory (6 PhD students: 12 collaborative articles and 4 reviews), codirected a Master work (UAM 2017) and two PhD thesis (UAM 2016 and 2023). Dr. de Yebenes has 10 highly cited publications about the role of microRNAs in GC regulation and oncogenic transformation topic (6 as corresponding and/or last author) in the most important journals of the field (Journal of Experimental Medicine IF: 15.5-cited 202 times, Immunity IF: 24.2-cited 131 times, Immunol Rev IF: 12.2-cited 74 times, Blood IF: 10.5-cited 54 times, Blood IF: 13.2, EMBO Reports IF: 8.8, Trends in Immunology IF: 16.7, Frontiers in Immunology IF: 8.9, Cell Death & Disease IF: 9.0 and a book chapter in Methods in Molecular Biology).). The clinical applications of these works for B cell lymphoma treatment have been patented (EP15382249.9 and EP17382740.3). Dr. de Yebenes obtained an “Investigador AECC” grant in 2018 to develop these research lines and a grant as principal investigator. Dr de Yébenes is the group leader of B cell physiopathology Group at the Immunology Department of the UCM Faculty of Medicine since December 2019. The laboratory is interested in charactering the role of non-coding RNAs in the regulation of B cell responses to use this knowledge for the design of new strategies to modulate immune responses and develop therapies for B cell lymphomas. The group has had financial support from the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (I+D+i 2019 and 2022 calls; PID2019-107551RB-I00 and; PID2022-137014OB-I00) and Comunidad de Madrid (CT4/21/PEJ-2020-AI/BMD-18112 and PIPF-2022/SAL-GL-24469) and is collaborating with national (Salvador Iborra, UCM; Nuria Martinez Martin, CBMSO and Álvaro Somoza, Idmea-Nanociencia) and international (Andrea Ventura, MSK. NY.USA) experts to develop these research lines. In addition, Dr. de Yébenes is the scientific co-director of the Lymphocyte Immunobiology Research Group,