Isabel Esaín-García
Isabel Esaín García (born 16 March 1998 in Zaragoza, Spain) is a Spanish biochemist, cancer researcher, and violist. She studied at IES Ítaca in Zaragoza, then moved to London to study biochemistry at Imperial College and music at the Royal College of Music. She earned a PhD in Chemical Sciences from the University of Cambridge, working with Shankar Balasubramanian and David Tannahill on genome and epigenomic engineering and how genes are turned on and off.
During her PhD, she developed a new method to control oncogenes—genes that can cause cancer—by turning them on or off with high precision. This could lead to new cancer treatments and therapies for genetic diseases. She won Cancer Research UK’s 2024 prize for the best doctoral thesis.
She is now a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, in the lab of Jennifer Doudna. She hopes to help create a center for personalized medicine in Aragon, Spain, and is in contact with local authorities about this. Alongside science, she continues her musical career as a viola player, a pursuit she began at age seven in Zaragoza.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 05:36 (CET).