He is the author of more than 500 original publications in peer-reviewed scientific journals, 24 of them categorized as “Highly Cited Paper”s by Thomson Reuters, he is among the most cited researchers in the world (top 1%) with the recognition “Highly Cited Researcher” (decade 2008-2018) by Clarivate Analytics. He is also a Member of numerous international scientific societies and Editorial Boards and a reviewer for many journals and funding agencies. Dr Esteller is also the Associate Editor for Cancer Research, The Lancet Oncology, Carcinogenesis, Genome Research and The Journal of The National Cancer Institute. He is the Editor-in-Chief of Epigenetics.

His work has received many awards including: , the Carcinogenesis Award (2005), the Beckman-Coulter Award (2006), the Fondazione Piemontese per la Ricerca sul Cancro (FPRC) Award (2006), the Swiss Bridge Award (2006), the Innovation Award from the Commonwealth of Massachussets (2007), the Human Frontier Science Program Award (2007), the DEbiopharm-EPFL Award (2009), the Dr. Josef Steiner Cancer Research Award (2009), the Lilly Foundation Preclinical Biomedical Research Award (2009), the World Health Summit Award (2010), the European Research Council Advanced Grant (2011), the “Rey Jaime I” Research Award (2013), the Severo Ochoa Award in Biomedicine (2014), the National Award in Oncology (2014), the “Dr Josep Trueta Medal” Goverment of Catalonia (2015), the National Research Award of the Government of Catalonia (2015), the Gold Medal of the Government of Catalonia (2016), the International Award of Catalonia (2016), the Falcó Carlemany Award (2017) and the Innovation in Healthcare Oncology Award (2018).