Hugo González, PhD, is the Principal Investigator of the Laboratory of Tumor Microenvironment & Metastasis at the Centro Basal Ciencia y Vida, Fundación Ciencia & Vida, and the Universidad San Sebastián in Santiago, Chile. He also serves as an Assistant Adjunct Professor in the Department of Anatomy at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), and is an elected member of the UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center. His research focuses on understanding how metastatic tumor cells (MTCs) adapt, persist, and escape immune surveillance across diverse tissue microenvironments. By integrating single-cell and spatial genomics, tumor organoid and assembloid platforms, advanced in vivo models, high-dimensional immune profiling, and CRISPR-based perturbations, his group investigates the transcriptional programs, mechanical forces, and immune–stromal interactions that define metastatic fitness.

González published the first single-cell atlas of human brain metastases (Cell, 2022), establishing foundational principles of metastatic architecture. His subsequent work has expanded into tumor autophagy, tissue mechanics, and immune crosstalk, with recent studies featured in Nature Cell Biology (2025) and Trends in Cancer (2025). He leads collaborative research programs across the United States, Europe, and Latin America and is the only Latin American representative in the Discovery Stack Pilot Study, a global initiative to improve the peer-review process. His research is supported by Fondecyt (Chile), the Concern Foundation, and the Breast Cancer Research Foundation.