PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

September 2022 - present La Caixa Junior Leader Fellow & Junior PI, proCURE, Catalan Institute of Oncology (ICO) & Oncobell, Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute (IDIBELL), (Barcelona, Spain).

July 2021 - September 2022 ICR Fellow and Junior Team Leader of the Systems Chemical Biology Team within the Division of Cancer Therapeutics at the Institute of Cancer Research (London, UK).

February 2017 - June 2021  Sir Henry Wellcome Postdoctoral Fellow between the Institute of Cancer Research, Department of Data Science and Division of Cancer Therapeutics (London, UK), Columbia University (New York, USA) and the Medicines Discovery Catapult (Alderley Park, UK).

May 2019 - present  Associate Director of Chemoinformatics at the non-profit Chemical Probes Portal.

January 2015 - December 2016  Marie Curie - Tecniospring Postdoctoral Fellow between the Institute of Cancer Research, Division of Cancer Therapeutics in London, UK and the Systems Pharmacology Group from the Hospital del Mar Medical Research Institute in Barcelona, Spain.

October 2007 – December 2008: Molecular Modelling Department, R&D, SALVAT Laboratories, Barcelona (Spain). Research Grant for a joint project between the pharmaceutical company SALVAT Laboratories and the Molecular Design Lab at Ramon Llull University in 11b-HSD1 drug discovery.

   · Patent Application: PCT/ES2010/000258, WO/2010/139827 WIPO

April 2007 – September 2007: Chemoinformatics and molecular modelling auxiliar scientist. Joint project between Modesto Orozco Lab (IRB - BSC), Juan Fernandez-Recio Lab (BSC) and the biotech company Genmedica Therapeutics.

July 2005 – September 2005: Undergraduate summer placement as science technician to set up a fragment database for NMR Fragment Based Drug Discovery for the biotech company CrystaX Pharmaceuticals (later merged with Oryzon).

 

EDUCATION

2009-2014 European PhD in Pharmacoinformatics EUROPIN at Pompeu Fabra University (UPF), Barcelona, Spain. Systems Pharmacology Group (advisor: Dr. Jordi Mestres)

2002-2007 MSc and BSc in Organic Chemistry at Ramon Llull University, IQS.

 

AWARDS, HONOURS & FELLOWSHIPS

  • 2022 La Caixa Junior Leader Fellowship
  • 2020 ICR Fellowship
  • 2017 Best Poster communication at SEF 2017 (Spanish Pharmacological Society Annual Conference)
  • 2016 Sir Henry Wellcome PostDoctoral Fellowship
  • 2014/15 Extraordinary Award to the best PhD Thesis by Pompeu Fabra University
  • 2014 Marie Curie Tecniospring Postdoctoral Research Fellowship
  • 2011 FI AGAUR Predoctoral Research Fellowship from the Generalitat of Catalonia Government.
  • 2nd prize best science presenter PRBB in 2013 YouTube
  • 2nd prize Microscience from Politechnical University of Valencia 2012
  • El·lipse Science Dissemination 1st prize in 2010

 

RESEARCH FUNDING

  • La Caixa Junior Leader Fellowship. Awarding body: La Caixa Foundation. Grant Holder: Dr. Albert Antolin (PI). (LCF/BQ/PI22/11910016). Amount: 300,000 €. Dates: September 2022 - August 2025.
  • ICR Fellowship. Awarding body: The Institute of Cancer Research. Grant Holder: Dr. Albert Antolin (PI). Amount: 240,000 £. Dates: July 2021 - June 2023. To support myself and a postdoctoral researcher during 2 years.
  • Sir Henry Wellcome PostDoctoral Fellowship 2017. Awarding body: The Wellcome Trust. Grant Holder: Dr. Albert Antolin. Title of project: "Harnessing Polypharmacology in Precision Oncology" (204735/Z/16/Z). Ammount: 250,000 £. Dates: February 2017 - January 2021. Sponsor: Prof. Bissan Al-Lazikani. Mentor: Prof. Paul Workman
  • ICR Vacation Studentship Scheme 2016. Awarding body: The Institute of Cancer Research. Grant Holder: Dr. Bissan Al-Lazikani,  Dr. Albert Antolin & Mr. Kristoff Farkas-Pall. Title of project: "Drug discovery trees: tracing pharmacology evolution". Ammount: 2,000 £. Dates: 8 weeks starting June 2016.
  • Marie Curie Tecniospring PostDoctoral Fellowship. Awarding body: EU and Catalonia Government. Grant Holder: Dr. Jordi Mestres & Dr. Albert Antolin. Title of project: "Exploiting Systems Pharmacology in Cancer Therapeutics" (TECSPR14-1-0025). Ammount: 93,308 €. Dates: January 2015 - December 2016.
  • FI AGAUR Predoctoral Research Studentship. Awarding body: Catalonia Government. Grant Holder: Mr. Albert Antolin. Title of project: "The impact of polypharmacology in chemical biology". Ammount: 60,000 € aprox. Dates: February 2011 - February 2014.

 

INVITED LECTURES & SEMINARS

"Towards Systems Drug Discovery: Harnessing Big Data and AI to tackle drug resistance", Vall d'Hebron Institute of Oncology (VHIO), Barcelona (Spain), June 2023.

"Harnessing Big Data and AI for cancer drug discovery and development", Center for Research in Molecular Medicine and Chronic Diseases (CiMUS), Santiago de Compostela (Spain), June 2023.

"Harnessing drug metabolites in precision oncology & small molecule drug design to target cancer drug resistance", Institut de Recherche en Cancerlologie de Montpellier (IRCM), Montpellier (France), February 2023.

"Chemical probe assessment: Expert advice vs. computational approaches", ExScientia (virtual), July 2022.

"Data Science in Chemical Biology: from chemogenomics libraries to multi-target drug design", HealX (virtual), June 2022.

"From Big Data to multi-target drugs for complex diseases", Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute (IDIBELL), Barcelona (Spain), March 2022.

"Harnessing polypharmacology in precision oncology and drug discovery", Micrographia Bio, London (UK), November 2021.

"Probe Miner: objective, quantitative, data-driven assessment of chemical probes", BenevolentAI, London (UK), 2018.

 

CONSULTING FOR

DarwinHealth Inc. (NYC, USA)

 

LANGUAGES

Spanish (native)

Catalan (native)

English (high level)

French (medium level)

Italian (medium level)

German (basic level)

 

INTERNSHIPS

June - December 2019: Columbia University in the City of New York (USA). Andrea Califano Lab.

April - May 2019: Medicines Discovery Catapult (UK). Prof. John Overington Group

July – October 2011: University of Perugia (Italy). Pellicciari Lab.

July – September 2006 (undergraduate summer placement): INSA-Toulouse (France). Pierre Monsan Lab.

 

PARTICIPATION IN EUROPEAN PROJECTS

ARITMO – Arhythmogenic Potential of Drugs HEALTH-2007-4.2-2:241679

 

REVIEWED FOR

Scientific Journals: Cancer Discovery, Nature Communications, Nucleic Acids Research, PLoS Biology, Journal of Cheminformatics, Expert Opinion on Drug Discovery, Scientific Reports, Marine Drugs, Molecular Informatics.

Research Councils & Foundations: Dutch Research Council (NWO), Einstein Foundation.

Universities: Pompeu Fabra University (MSc Bioinformatics for Health Sciences - Master Thesis & PhD Thesis 1st year evaluation committee)Rovira i Virgili University (PhD Nutrition and Metabolism - Member of the PhD Thesis Defence Committee).

Link to my reviewer profile at Publons

 

MEMBER OF SCIENTIFIC ASSOCIATIONS & SOCIETIES

SRUK/CERU

British Pharmacological Society

AACR

RSEQ

SMR

 

MEMBER OF COMMITTEES

ICR PostDoc Association Committee, IT representative (2015 - 2018)

LGBT+ Network (ICR & RMH), social representative (2017 - 2022)

 

COURSES

Entrepeneurship University of Cambridge, Judge Business school, Ignite 2016 course.

Project Management Europin training programme. website

Patenting  University of Barcelona, Patent center, courses on Pharmacy and Chemistry patents and patent transfer.

Technology valuation and transfer, venture capital Medicamentos Innovadores actions (website, course, jornadas), PRBB Intervals courses (website) and ACC1O courses.

Science writing and communication PRBB Intervals courses (website), ICR and Royal Society.

Grant and Fellowship writing ICR and Cancer Research UK (CRUK).

 

SKILLS

Computational Skills:

 - OS: Linux, UNIX and Windows

 - Data Science: Working knowledge in python, pandas data analysis library, sklearn, and R.

 - Software:

  • Drug Design Commercial Software: Schöridinger suit, MOE, Discovery Studio, ROCS (OpenEye), Volsurf and Metasite (Molecular Discovery), GOLD (CCDC).
  • Drug design non-commercial software: PyMol, Cactvs Browser, Autodock, etc.
  • Open-source chemoinformatics software and workflow systems: KNIME, RDKit.
  • In silico target profiling: CLARITY (developed at my PhD laboratory and now commercially available through the spin-off company Chemotargets).
  • Electronic notebook: Dotmatics
  • Data visualization, analysis and illustration: Vortex, Cytoscape, Illustrator.
  • Basic SQL skills
  • Experience working with and developing multidisciplinary databases (like Drugbank, Pubchem, ChEMBL, canSAR…) and website resources (like Probe Miner, FCP, iPHACE, PHARMATREK, etc.).
  • Bioinformatics: analysis of cancer cell line 'omics' data, gene expression and VIPER network-based inference of protein activity.
  • Analysis of clinical data.

Project management, including CRO outsourcing and multidisciplinary projects

Communication Skills: Good science communicator across different scientific disciplines.

Science writing and outreach

Teaching 2022-onwards: University of Barcelona and Pompeu Fabra University (3 lessons in 3 different MSc subjects). Formerly: Imperial College BSc and MSc course on "Bioengineering approaches to cancer", ICR course Introduction to Bioinformatics

People management, student supervision, mentoring

Organisation of scientific meetings

Joomla templates by a4joomla