Cristina (C) Pina MD PhD
Training
| 2020 | Fellowship Higher Education Academy (UK) |
| 2008 | DPhil Clinical Medicine (Oxford) |
| 2000 | Full medical registration (Portugal) |
| 1998 | MD (Lisbon) |
Research interests
- Normal and malignant haematopoiesis.
- Epigenetic and transcriptional variability; transcriptional noise.
- 3D models of normal and malignant blood development.
- Infant Acute Myeloid Leukaemia.
Technology
- Developmental / haemogenic gastruloids (3D models); haematopoietic stem cell and progenitor assays; endothelial cultures (2D and 3D).
- Single-cell RNA-seq; bulk RNA-seq; ChIP-seq; network analysis.
- Confocal imaging; immunofluorescence; in situ hybridization (ISH/FISH); hybridisation chain reaction (HCR).
Resume
| From May 2025 | Principal Investigator – Sanquin Research. Amsterdam, Netherlands. |
| 2023-2025 | Research Lead – Division of Biosciences. College of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences, Brunel University London |
| 2022-2025 | Senior Lecturer in Biomedical Sciences. College of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences and Centre for Genome Engineering and Maintenance, Brunel University London. |
| 2019-2022 | Lecturer in Biomedical Sciences (tenured 2021). College of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences and Centre for Genome Engineering and Maintenance, Brunel University London. |
| 2015-2019 | Senior Research Associate / Group Leader. Departments of Haematology and Genetics, University of Cambridge, UK |
| 2018-2019 | Leuka John Goldman Fellow for Future Science. |
| 2015-2018 | Kay Kendall Leukaemia Fund Intermediate Fellow. |
| 2013-2015 | Research Associate. Department of Haematology, University of Cambridge, UK. |
| 2011-2013 | Research Associate. Stem Cell Laboratory, UCL Cancer Institute, UK. |
| 2008-2011 | Post-doctoral Researcher. MRC Molecular Haematology Unit, University of Oxford, UK. |
| 1999-2002 | Pre-registration Intern (1999-2000) / Specialist Resident in Internal Medicine (2001-2002). Santa Maria University Hospital, Lisbon, Portugal. |
| 1997-2002 | Guest Lecturer (Histology and Embryology). University of Lisbon Medical School, Lisbon, Portugal. |
Other activities
MEMBERSHIP EDITORIAL BOARD
Review Commons Advisory Board Member
PLoS One Academic Editor.
GRANT PANELS
Leukaemia UK Project Grant Panel Member.
CONSULTANCY
2024-2025: Scientific Consultant in MRC Drug Discovery Programme (Lead PI: S. Ward; Medicines Discovery Institute, University of Cardiff).
RESEARCH PARTNERSHIPS
2021-2026: External Member of the Dutch PSIDER Consortium GREAT: 3D Gastruloid Cultures to model Normal and Pathogenic Human Development (coordinator: N. Geijsen, University of Leiden).
MEMBERSHIP PROFESSIONAL BODIES AND SOCIETIES
Full membership of Ordem dos Médicos Portuguesa (Portuguese Medical Council; #38185). Membership of British Society for Haematology and Genetics Society.
Top 10 publications
(#denotes corresponding / senior author; *denotes equal contribution)
Ragusa D*, Suen CW*, Torregrosa Cortes G*, Pastorino F*, Johns A, Ciciro Y, Van den Brink S, Cilli M, Dijkhuis L, Byrne C, Ionescu G-A, Cerveira J, Kranc KR, Hernandez-Hernandez V, Ponzoni M, Bigas A, Garcia-Ojalvo J, Martinez Arias A, Pina C#, Dissecting infant leukemia developmental origins with a hemogenic gastruloid model. eLife 2025; (reviewed pre-print). Revised version BiorXiv 2025;
Pina C#, Contributions of transcriptional noise to leukaemia evolution: KAT2A as a case-study. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 2024. 379: 20230052. abstract
Ragusa D, Ciciro Y, Federico C, Saccone S, Bruno F, Sisu C, Pina C#, Sala A#, Tosi S#, Engineered model of t(7;12)(q36;p13) AML recapitulates patient-specific features and gene expression profiles. Oncogenesis 2022. 11: 50. abstract
Gupta S, Dovey OM, Domingues AF, Cyran OW, Cash CM, Giotopoulos G, Rak J, Cooper J, Gozdecka M, Dijkhuis L, Asby RJ, Al-Jabery N, Hernandez-Hernandez V, Prabakaran S, Huntly BJ, Vassiliou GS, Pina C#. Transcriptional variability accelerates pre-leukemia by cell diversification and perturbation of protein synthesis. Sci Adv 2022. 8: eabn4886. abstract
Arede L, Foerner E*, Wind S*, Kulkarni R, Domingues AF, Giotopoulos G, Kleinwaechter S, Mollenhauer-Starkl M, Davison H, Chandru A, Asby R, Samarista R, Gupta S, Forte D, Curti A, Scheer E, Huntly BJP, Tora L, Pina C#. Unique roles of ATAC and SAGA - KAT2A complexes in normal and malignant hematopoiesis. Blood Adv 2022 abstract
Domingues AF*, Kulkarni R*, Giotopoulos G, Gupta S, Vinnenberg L, Arede L, Foerner E, Khalili M, Adao RR, Johns A, Tan S, Zeka K, Huntly BJ, Prabakaran S, Pina C#. Loss of Kat2a enhances transcriptional noise and depletes acute myeloid leukemia stem-like cells. eLife. 2020 9: abstract.
Moris N, Edri S*, Seyres D*, Kulkarni R*, Domingues AF, Balayo T, Frontini M, Pina C#, Histone acetyltransferase Kat2a stabilises pluripotency with control of transcriptional heterogeneity. Stem Cells 2018; abstract
Tzelepis K*, Koike-Yusa H*, De Braekeleer E, Li Y, Metzakopian E, Dovey OM, Mupo A, Grinkevich V, Li M, Mazan M, Gozdecka M, Onishi S, Cooper J, Patel M, McKerrell T, Chen B, Domingues AF, Gallipoli P, Teichman S, Ponstingl H, McDermott U, Saez-Rodriguez J, Huntly BJP, Iorio F, Pina C#, Vassiliou GS# and Yusa K#, A CRISPR dropout screen identifies genetic vulnerabilities and therapeutic targets in acute myeloid leukaemia. Cell Reports 2016 abstract
Pina C*, Teles J*, Fugazza C*, May G, Guo Y, Ohlsson M, Eden P, Peterson C, Enver T, Ddit3 is a nodal regulator of erythro-myeloid lineage specification. Cell Reports 2015; abstract
Pina C*, Fugazza C*, Tipping AJ*, Brown J, Soneji S, Teles J, Petersen C, Enver T, Inferring rules of lineage commitment in haematopoiesis. Nat Cell Biol 2012; 14: 287-294. abstract
