Alemany, Laia

Laia Alemany holds a Medicine degree (University of Barcelona-UB, 2000), a speciality in Preventive Medicine and Public Health (Vall d’Hebron University Hospital, 2005), a Master in Epidemiology and Public Health (Pompeu Fabra University-UPF, 2005), and a Master in Molecular Oncology (Spanish National Cancer Research Center-CNIO, 2017). He is currently undergoing a Master in Health Management.
After her training at Vall d’Hebron University Hospital in preventive medicine, in 2005 she received a fellowship from the Spanish Association of Vaccines-AEV to perform a half-year stay at the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) in Argentina working on surveillance of immunopreventable diseases. After that, in 2006 she joined the Consorci d’Atenció Primària de Salut Barcelona Esquerra, where her main task was giving support to research, educational and management activities.

In 2007, she joined the Cancer Epidemiology Research Program (PREC) of the Catalan Institute of Oncology (ICO/IDIBELL), where she carried out her research into the causal relationship of the human papilloma virus (HPV) and anogenital and head and neck cancers. Her main activity was the coordination and participation in research activities within an international study on HPV and related cancers, involving more than 20,000 cancer samples recruited and analysed.

Based on this project, in 2016 she obtained her PhD with the thesis entitled “Human Papillomavirus DNA Prevalence and Type-Specific Distribution in Invasive Cancers of the Cervix, Vulva, Vagina, Anus, Penis and Head-Neck”, which was awarded by the University of Barcelona and the Royal Academy of Doctors of Spain. As part of her PhD program, in 2013 she stayed 3 months at the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ, Heidelberg) supported by a scholarship from the Spanish Association Against Cancer-AECC.

Since 2016 she is Head of the Unit of Molecular Epidemiology and Genetics in Infections and Cancer (UNIC EMG) and in 2018 she became Head of the Cancer Epidemiology Research Programme (PREC) and Research Team Head in CIBERESP (Institute of Health Carlos III-ISCIII), a network of multidisciplinary research teams from different institutions and universities working in epidemiology
and public health.

Her current research topic is on endometrial and ovarian cancer prevention, anal cancer prevention; and particularly, the natural history from oral HPV infection to iphead and neck cancers, with a special focus on epidemiology and prevention.