Victoria Sanz-Moreno

Victoria Sanz-Moreno received a degree in chemistry and later in biochemistry from the University of Oviedo, Spain, followed by a PhD in chemical sciences studying Ras-MAPK signalling from the University of Cantabria. She then joined Professor Chris Marshall's lab at The Institute of Cancer Research in London as a Marie Curie Intra-European Postdoctoral Fellow. In 2008, she received the Applied Biosystems and EACR 40th Anniversary Research Award for her work on Rho GTPase signalling during cancer dissemination.

In 2011, she started her independent group and received a CRUK Career Development Fellowship at King's College London to study transcriptional programmes driving metastasis. In 2015, she was highly commended as CRUK Communications and Brand Ambassador. In 2017, she was awarded the BSCB Women in Cell Biology Early Career Award Medal, and received a CRUK Senior Fellowship to study the role of Rho kinase in cancer progression and therapy responses. In 2017–2018, she was featured by the Journal of Cell Science as "Cell Scientist to Watch," and by the Journal of Cell Biology for her work on Rho GTPases.

In 2018, she joined Barts Cancer Institute, Queen Mary University of London, as Professor of Cancer Cell Biology, to study how cytoskeletal dynamics in metastatic cancer cells alter the tumour microenvironment. In 2021, she was elected to be part of "Ruta de las Cientificas," an app celebrating the achievements of nine women in STEM. In 2022, she received the Estela Medrano Memorial Award from the Society for Melanoma Research, the VP Award for Research Excellence from Queen Mary's Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry, and the Research Impact Award at Barts Cancer Institute.

In September 2023, her lab moved to the Breast Cancer Now Toby Robins Research Centre at The Institute of Cancer Research. Combining cell biology, omics, mouse models, patient material and digital pathology, her lab works on understanding how cytoskeletal dynamics in cancer cells control local invasion, dissemination, survival and outgrowth at the secondary site. Her lab is interested in deciphering how metastatic cancer cells interact with their microenvironment while evading anti-cancer therapies, with the ultimate goal of finding anti-metastasis therapies.

She is passionate about science communication and promoting diversity in science.