Joan Massagué doctorate in pharmacy at the University of Barcelona (UB) and obtained a postdoctoral fellowship at Brown University. In 1989 he joined the cell biology program at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, and in 2003 acceded to the direction of Biology and Cancer Genetics.

He is a researcher at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, member of the National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine and holds the Chair Alfred P. Sloan. Since 2005, is deputy director of IRB Barcelona, Barcelona Science Park (PCB), its mission is to develop competitive research programs, incorporating leading scientists and policymakers advanced research.

She also oversees a laboratory dedicated to the study of cancer metastasis, the MetLab. Among the many awards received is the Prince of Asturias Prize (2004) and the prize GHA Clowes Memorial Award presented by the American Association for Cancer Research (2008) and, last June, the prize BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge in the category in Biomedicine. The work of Massagué’s group has focused on studying the control of cell growth and metastasis in cancer.