María Blasco

Impact

María A. Blasco leads the Telomeres and Telomerase Group at the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO) in Madrid. Her group studies how telomere shortening limits the regenerative capacity of adult stem cells and contributes to aging, and why cancer cells are immortal. Its programme covers telomeres and telomerase as therapeutic targets in cancer and age-related disease, telomerase gene therapy for telomere syndromes and age-related conditions, telomeric non-coding RNAs (TERRA), telomeres in nuclear reprogramming to iPS cells, and telomerase reactivation as a unified approach to fibrosis, with recent mouse work on telomere dysfunction in lung and kidney fibrosis. She co-authored the 2023 Cell update 'Hallmarks of aging: an expanding universe'. Blasco served as CNIO scientific director from 2011 until January 2025, when the CNIO Board of Trustees removed her and the managing director from their posts; she continues to lead her research group. For longevity researchers, her work is a frequently cited reference for the role of telomeres in organismal aging and for telomerase-based interventions.

Metrics

• h-index 133 · google scholar as of 2026-09-23 source ↗

Research output

507 works · 72,164 citations · h-index 118 OpenAlex ↗

Selected publications

• The Hallmarks of Aging ↗ 2013 · 15,428 citations
• Hallmarks of aging: An expanding universe ↗ 2023 · 6,525 citations
• Telomere Shortening and Tumor Formation by Mouse Cells Lacking Telomerase RNA ↗ 1997 · 2,133 citations
• Cellular Senescence in Cancer and Aging ↗ 2007 · 1,724 citations
• Telomeres and human disease: ageing, cancer and beyond ↗ 2005 · 1,704 citations

Links

Research fields