NicolaeCiobu Zubenco Columbia UniversityUnited States

Nicolae Ciobu Zubenco earned his B.Sc. in Biochemistry from the University of the Balearic Islands and his M.Sc. in Molecular Biomedicine from the Autonomous University of Madrid. Nico is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Cancer Biology at the Miller School of Medicine, University of Miami, currently completing his doctoral research at Columbia University. He received the support of the Fulbright and La Caixa Foundation to pursue his doctorate studies in the US. His research focuses on the impact of overnutrition and metabolic reprogramming on tumor progression and antitumor immunity in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC).He integrates cancer immunology, tumor metabolism, and systems-level bioinformatics to dissect how dietary and metabolic stress reshape the tumor microenvironment and CD8⁺ T cell functionality. His work aims to identify metabolic vulnerabilities that impair antitumor immunity, with the long-term goal of developing combinatorial therapeutic strategies that enhance immunotherapy responses in HCC and metabolically driven cancers.