I was born in Seville, Spain, and I always saw myself participating in the process of helping sick people getting recovered or at least feeling much better, that's why I studied Pharmacy in my hometown. I decided later to start my PhD in order to be in the front line of the latest scientific advances. After I got my certificate I wanted to experience what it is working in more international labs and that is why I decided to accept a two-years postdoc offer at the Karolinska Institute, where I had my first experience working in my second language. Extremely rich and open-minding experience where I learnt and enjoyed the fact of being surrounded by other cultures and awesome researchers and even better people. Nevertheless, I thought coming to London could be even more interesting both professionally and personally and I joined as Research associate at King's College London, where I gave my first lecture to Dentistry students. That experience was very successful and I decided I wanted to propagate scientific knowledge to students avid of them. That's why I accepted this position as Teaching Fellow at the School of Pharmacy where everything started, but with different location, a bit more than 10 years ago. I will have the chance of transferring my passion about Science to students who remind me a lot the person I was. Luckily I can continue developing my research in trying to find a better vaccine against Tuberculosis disease in collaboration with my former institution.
I got my BSc in Pharmacy at the University of Seville (Spain) in 2007. I started my PhD in the Institute of Biomedicine of Seville in 2008 where I studied the consequences of the mismatch in minor histocompatibility antigens after allogeneic stem-cell transplantation. After I got my PhD certificate in 2013, I joined the lab of Dr Susanne Gabrielsson at Karolinska Institute in Stockholm (Sweden) as postdoc where I was studying the use of exosomes as delivery system for cancer vaccines but also as biomarkers for different pulmonary diseases. After 2 years I accepted a position as Research associate at King’s College London where Prof Juraj Ivanyi was my supervisor during the three years I spent in his group trying to find a better vaccine against Mycobacterium tuberculosis. At the beginning of 2018, I joined the School of Pharmacy at University College London as Teaching Fellow to be part of the scientific knowledge transference to MSc students.
I am in the process of creating my own group where to combine these two fields, using exosomes as delivery system for vaccines against tuberculosis against humans but also in cattle. In both cases, I would like to develop vaccines that can be administered via mucosa to induce the immune response at the infection site, the lungs.