Team
Management
Olga Genilloud
Scientific Director
Olga Genilloud obtained her Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics (1988) from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain. She has extended research experience in the academic environment from her work in the synthesis of antibiotic peptides (Hospital Ramón y Cajal, Madrid 1984-1989; Harvard Medical School, Boston, 1987), In 1989 she joined the Centro de Investigación Básica de España (CIBE), at Merck Sharp and Dohme in Spain, where she has lead for nineteen years the discovery of bacterial natural products, ten years as Head of the Bacterial Microbiology Group. S. She is experienced as project leader in internationall competitive programs , the management of international research groups and collaborations with academia and industrial partners, and the coordination of multidisciplinary teams. In February 2009 she was appointed Scientific Director of Fundación MEDINA. She has an extended list of publications, book chapters and patents derived from her contributions to the discovery of novel compounds and the application of new molecular tools in Natural Products mining.
Email: olga.genilloud@medinaandalucia.es
Eric Lagarde
Business Manager
Eric Lagarde got his Economics Bachelor degree at the University of Valencia. He then started to work in the USA where he achieved his MBA at the Florida International University. Back in Spain, he has held managerial position in sales department, consultancy and investment companies. During the past eight years he was an Investment Director in a family office. He recently refreshes his expertise with a PMD from ESADE. He has a global experience in all the areas of the company, great strategic vision and planning and good capacity of data analysis, financial planning and controlling.
Email: eric.lagarde@medinaandalucia.es
Chemistry
Fernando Reyes
Area Head-Chemistry
Fernando Reyes received his Ph. D. in Organic Chemistry from the University of Granada (Spain) in 1995. In January 1997, he started an 18 month post-doctoral stage with Prof. Chris Abell at the University of Cambridge (UK) focused on the synthesis of potential inhibitors of enzymes of the shikimate and pantothenate pathways. Over the last 14 years, he has worked on the isolation and structural elucidation of bioactive natural products from several sources (microorganisms and marine macroorganisms) for different companies, including Smithkline Beecham (Tres Cantos, Madrid, Spain) and PharmaMar (Colmenar Viejo, Madrid, Spain). He was the Head of the Natural Products Chemistry Department of the latter company until September 2010, when he joined the Fundación MEDINA as Area Head of the Chemistry Department. He is co-author of more than 30 scientific publications in the field of natural products chemistry and co-inventor of 11 international patents.
Email: fernando.reyes@medinaandalucia.es
José R. Tormo
Associate Area Head-Chemistry
José R. Tormo finished his Ph.D studies in the Faculty of Pharmacy of the University of Valencia in 2000. He has more than fifteen years of R&D experience including the management of multidisciplinary teams in international (Merck & Co) and national (Valentia BioPharma) pharmaceutical companies, and strong professional and academic knowledge in biology, biochemistry, natural products chemistry, pharmacology, screening and automation. He presents international experience in the design and implementation of global Standard Operation Procedures for Pharmaceutical Biotechnology Screening Laboratories including design, development and supervision of automated chemical extraction techniques for microbial fermentations, compound management of synthetics and natural products, isolation and structural elucidation of natural products, medicinal chemistry, in vitro and in vivo screening, tumor cell lines cytotoxicity evaluation, in vitro P450 induction evaluation of culture cell lines, biochemical evaluation of mitochondrial respiratory chain inhibitors.
Email: jose.tormo@medinaandalucia.es
Jesús Martín
Associate Area Head-Chemistry
Jesús Martín received his Bachelor’s degree in Chemistry, with a major in Biochemistry, from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. He worked for Merck & Co. during nineteen years in drug discovery from Natural Products, including five years at the research center in Rahway (US). He is responsible for natural product de-replication in MEDINA's chemistry department. He is known as specialist in MS interpretation and an experienced LC-MS instrumentalist. He is also expert in software development, databases maintenance and scientific data mining with a broad knowledge of programming and instrument integration in research laboratories.
Email: jesus.martin@medinaandalucia.es
Noureddine El Aouad
Senior Scientist, Chemistry
Noureddine El Aouad has bachelor and obtained his Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry in 2002 in the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Cadi Ayyad of Marrakech (Morocco) title certificated by the University of Valencia, where he has work for 7 years, initially as a postdoctoral fellow and latter as a Senior Research Technician in the Department of Pharmacology. During 2006-2008, he performed a Master in "Research and Rational Use of Drugs" in the University of Valencia. He participated actively on R & D projects with different national and international research groups (Argentina, Colombia, France, and Spain) and with several pharmaceutical companies (Servier, Merck & Co). He also presents a long experience in Medicinal Chemistry for over ten years with isolation, semi-synthesis and structural elucidation of bioactive secondary metabolites, total synthesis of new drugs, evaluation of cytotoxicity, and binding radioligands techniques.
Email: noureddine.aouad@medinaandalucia.es
Ignacio Pérez-Victoria
Principal Scientist, Chemistry
Ignacio Pérez-Victoria studied Chemistry at the University of Granada where he also obtained the Advanced Studies Diploma in Organic and Pharmaceutical Chemistry. He worked for four years at Puleva Biotech, S. A., on Natural Products, analytical chemistry (LC-MS) and biocatalysis in organic synthesis and later for a year at the Institute of Parasitology and Biomedicine “López-Neyra” on membrane proteins, obtaining his PhD in 2006. He has carried out postdoctoral research at the University of Twente (Netherlands), where he worked with Dr. Aldrik Velders on the application of diffusion NMR spectroscopy for the analysis and characterization of dynamic combinatorial libraries. His second postdoc, funded by a Marie Curie Intra-European Fellowship, took place in the Chemistry Department of the University of Oxford, where he worked on NMR studies of ligand-protein binding and molecular docking in the group of Prof. Ben Davis in close collaboration with Dr. Tim Claridge, with whom he had already worked during a predoctoral research stay in the development of NMR pulse sequences for complex organic structural elucidation.
Email: ignacio.perez-victoria@medinaandalucia.es
Microbiology
Gerald Bills
Area Head, Microbiology
Gerald Bills has 25 years of experience in natural products of microbial origin, microbial fermentation, ecology and systematics of fungi and diagnostic plant pathology. Before coming to the Fundación MEDINA, he worked as Principal Advisor for Biosecurity New Zealand. He was Senior Research Fellow and group leader for fungal research in the Centro de Investigación Básica (CIBE), Merck Sharp & Dohme de España, SA from 2001 until 2008. He started with Merck in 1988 and worked 13 years in natural products discovery at Merck Research Laboratories, Rahway, New Jersey, USA. Gerald graduated from West Virginia University (BS Plant Sciences; MS Plant Pathology) and from Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University (PhD Botany). He held post-doctoral positions at the USDA’s National Fungus Collection and the Department of Botany, University of Wyoming. He has about 125 research articles, chapters and reviews, and two books, and is co-inventor on 40 US and international patents.
Email: gerald.bills@medinaandalucia.es
Ignacio González Martínez
Principal Scientist
Ignacio Gonzalez studied Biology (Biochemistry and Molecular Biology) at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid and has a master degree (Diploma de Estudios Avanzados) in Microbiology from the Universidad de Alcalá de Henares. He worked at Merck, Sharp & Dohme de España, S.A. at Merck's Basic Research Centre (CIBE) as a staff scientist for 18 years. He is an expert in microbiological techniques, especially in the identification and typing of microorganisms. He is skilled in gas chromatography, PCR fingerprinting and DNA sequencing. He has extensive experience developing and running biochemical and microbiological assays. He is coauthor of 11 papers, 1 patent and 21 congress posters.
Email: ignacio.gonzalez@medinaandalucia.es
Gonzalo Platas Mochales
Associate Area Head-Microbiology
Gonzalo Platas has bachelor and PhD in Biology from the Autonomous University of Madrid. He has twenty years of experience in different fields of microbiology (clinical microbiology, soil microbiology, archaebacteria, and fungi). He has extensive expertise in microbial isolation, culturing microorganisms, antimicrobial assays and application of molecular methods for microbial classification. He has co directed two doctoral theses and one master project and published 68 papers.
Email: gonzalo.platas@medinaandalucia.es
Daniel Oves Costales
Principal Scientist
Daniel Oves Costales has over 10 years of experience in the chemistry and biology of natural products. He obtained his PhD in chemistry in 2004 for work carried out in the total synthesis of new vitamin D analogues. In 2005 he moved to Prof. Challis group at University of Warwick (UK), where he stayed for 5 years working on the characterization of microbial secondary metabolite pathways. In 2010 he joined Fundacion MEDINA, where he is developing approaches to unleash the biosynthetic potential of actinomycetes. He is coauthor of 13 papers and 2 book chapters.
Email: daniel.oves@medinaandalucia.es
Screening
Mª Francisca Vicente Pérez
Area Head, Screening and Target Validation
Mª Francisca Vicente has a Ph.D. in Biology and Molecular Genetics (1986, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid ) and more than 10 years experience in R&D, managing teams and working in the multidisciplinary environment of a multinational pharmacy (Merck Sharp and Dohme, Spain) and other research centre s (Institute Pasteur, and Hospital Necker, France). She has been in charge of the design, implementation, and supervision of many R&D projects. She is experienced in identifying and managing the economic resources for developing new scientific and technological projects. She has coordinated and managed national and international research groups. She is a member of various scientific societies and has published many articles and patents in specialized journals and books. Her teaching experience was gained by giving practical and theoretical classes in different masters and university programs. In February 2009, she joined the Fundación MEDINA as Area Head of the Screening and Target Validation Department.
Email:francisca.vicente@medinaandalucia.es
Nuria De Pedro
Principal Scientist
Nuria de Pedro studied Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. She later started her career at Merck in the Lead Evaluation area where she was responsible for the Cell Culture department and was part of the Ion Channel group for a period of 10 years. She is part of the initial team of Fundación Medina in the Screening area. Her skills cover a broad experience in cell culture, functional assays and electrophysiology assays.
Email: nuria.de.pedro@medinaandalucia.es
Bastien Cautain
Principal Scientist
Bastien Cautain has a Ph.D. in Immunology and physiopathology from “Université Paul Sabatier” of Toulouse, France. After a postdoctoral stage at Institut Jacques Monod Paris he joined the CNIO-Lilly laboratory in Madrid, where he has work for more than 6 years. He was Senior Scientist for CNIO-Lilly collaboration, project leader in development of biological reagents to understand the biology of MAP kinase member and metabolic disorders. He has gain knowledge on the activity of small molecules in tumorigenesis and inflammatory processes, target inhibition and drug exposure test development for drug screening, development of cancer model for efficacy study and target validation in vitro and in vivo. In September 2010, he joined the Fundación MEDINA as Principal Scientist of the Screening and Target Validation Department.
Email: bastien.cautain@medinaandalucia.es
José Perez Del Palacio
Senior Scientist
José Perez Del Palacio (MS, BSc) is a scientist with ten years of industrial experience in a leading pharmaceutical research company (Merck Sharp & Dohme ) working mainly in biochemistry and drug discovery. He has a broad knowledge of high throughput screening technologies and biochemical assays. He has additional experience and specialization in analytical methods development for HPLC, LC/MS/MS, GC and GC/MS systems. He is the author of several papers, scientific posters and presentations at international conferences and congresses.
Email: jose.perezdelpalacio@medinaandalucia.es
Mercedes de la Cruz
Senior Scientist
Mercedes de la Cruz Moreno obtained her BSc degree in Chemistry (1998) from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. During nine years (1999-2008), she worked as Research Microbiologist at the Spanish Basic Research Centre (CIBE) of Merck Sharp and Dohme where she focused on discovering new anti-infective drugs from microbial natural products. From 2008 to 2009, Mercedes de la Cruz worked at the Animal Health Surveillance Centre VISAVET where she studied antimicrobial resistance and food borne zoo noses. She is the author of several papers, scientific posters and presentations at international conferences and congresses.
Email: mercedes.delacruz@medinaandalucia.es
Information Technologies
Francisco J. Asensio Álvarez
IT Manager.
Francisco J. Asensio studied chemistry and biology at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. He started his career at Merck where he functioned as IT Manager and head of the Assay Support and Process Automation department for a period of 18 years. He is part of the initial team of Fundación MEDINA and IT Manager. He has a profound understanding of the interplay between lab processes of the pharmaceutical field and IT technology. His skills cover a wide range of topics such as lab process automation, lab data management, statistical analysis and data mining, assay support, etc...
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