Rate My Professor Pilar Blancafort

Pilar Blancafort is an Associate Professor of Cancer Epigenetics in the School of Human Sciences and UWA Medical School at the University of Western Australia, and Program Head of Cancer and Head of the Cancer Epigenetics Laboratory at the Harry Perkins Institute of Medical Research. She completed her Bachelor of Science at the University of Barcelona and her PhD in Biochemistry at the University of Montreal in 1999, followed by postdoctoral studies in genome engineering at the Scripps Research Institute in California. Blancafort established her independent research laboratory at the University of North Carolina in 2005 as an Assistant Professor, where she was promoted to tenured Professor in 2011. In 2012, she relocated her laboratory to the University of Western Australia, and in 2014, she joined the Harry Perkins Institute of Medical Research as Head of the Cancer Epigenetics Laboratory.

Her research specializes in epigenetic reprogramming and genome engineering for precision therapies targeting refractory cancers, including triple-negative breast cancer, ovarian cancer, and hepatocellular carcinoma. Blancafort's group engineers sequence-specific DNA-binding proteins such as zinc fingers, TALEs, and CRISPR/dCas9 platforms fused to epigenetic effectors to reactivate tumor suppressor genes and silence oncogenic transcription factors like SOX2. They develop targeted nanoparticle delivery systems for solid tumors and investigate novel oncogenes activating the PI3K-AKT-mTOR pathway. Key publications include "Synthetic Epigenetic Reprogramming of Mesenchymal to Epithelial States Using the CRISPR/dCas9 Platform in Triple Negative Breast Cancer" (Advanced Science, 2023), "Epigenetic reactivation of tumor suppressor genes with CRISPRa technologies as precision therapy for hepatocellular carcinoma" (Clinical Epigenetics, 2023), "Unpacking the Complexity of Epithelial Plasticity: From Master Regulator Transcription Factors to Non-Coding RNAs" (Cancers, 2023), and "Targeted silencing of the oncogenic transcription factor SOX2 in breast cancer" (Nucleic Acids Research, 2012). She has secured major grants from the NHMRC, National Breast Cancer Foundation, Cancer Council WA, ARC Future Fellowship, Cancer Council of Western Australia Research Fellowship, US Department of Defense Breast Cancer Program, and NCI/NIH awards. Her research, cited over 4,300 times, advances treatment strategies for metastatic women's cancers.