Felipe Cortés, international prestige for studying cells which repair DNA

Born in Seville, Felipe Cortés has ‘won’ two million euros. But it wasn’t just luck, rather the result of a brilliant science career in the field of biology. Now, he is a Head Scientist at the Spanish Centre for Scientific Research at the Andalusian Centre for Molecular Biology and Regenerative Medicine (Cabimer). He was distinguished by the European Research Council with a Consolidator Grant for this amount to work on the project TOPOmics over the next five years, linked to a specialism he developed since graduating from the University of Seville: understanding how cells repair DNA when a strand breaks. Because DNA strands break constantly, like a rope, although some cells know how to fix them. However, what if they can’t do it or they do it incorrectly? This can cause neurological problems or tumours. In 2014, Cortés gained recognition as a young researcher from the two most representative institutions of his field in Europe and Spain: the European Molecular Biology Organisation and the Spanish Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.