WOMEN RESEARCHERS IN HEALTH BIOTECHNOLOGY
The Institute for Research, Development and Innovation in Health Biotechnology of Elche (IDiBE-UMH) organized last Friday, February 13, coinciding with the International Day of Women and Girls in Science, a new edition of Science with Tapas. The activity took place at the University’s venue in Plaça de Baix, in the center of Elche, and was attended by a large audience.
After the welcome remarks by the Director of IDiBE, Antonio Ferrer, the researcher and roundtable moderator, María del Mar Ortega-Villaizán, introduced the two IDiBE-UMH researchers who would participate in the event: Dr. Pilar García, a member of the research group “Hard-to-Treat Cancers,” and Dr. Isabel Devesa, from the “Peripheral Neuropathies” research group.
Dr. Pilar García began by explaining how her path in scientific research started. She studied Biology at the Complutense University of Madrid, where her main interest was human genetics. After completing her PhD on the role of cyclic AMP in insulin secretion mechanisms in rat pancreatic islets, she moved to the United States as a postdoctoral researcher at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, MD, and at the Lombardi Cancer Center of Georgetown University in Washington, DC, where she began her research on cellular models of breast cancer. After her second stay abroad, she joined the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the Miguel Hernández University, where she currently carries out her teaching duties, as well as IDiBE, where she worked with Dr. José Antonio Ferragut and Dr. Miguel Saceda. With the latter, she continues her research on poor-prognosis tumors and drug delivery strategies aimed at targeting tumor cells more directly. Finally, Dr. García thanked all the people who have supported her research vocation.
Dr. Isabel Devesa, for her part, explained that her research vocation has involved a long journey that has been worthwhile. She studied Pharmacy in Valencia due to her interest in biology. She later obtained a fellowship to pursue her PhD in the Department of Pharmacology, focusing specifically on rheumatoid arthritis, a chronic autoimmune disease that mainly affects women between 40 and 60 years of age. Dr. Devesa carried out her postdoctoral stays in the pharmaceutical industry in the Netherlands and Italy, where she combined knowledge generation in drug development with its translation to the market. Since 2007, her research has focused on neurobiology, studying the molecular bases regulating pain signaling and pharmacologically characterizing new targets involved in chronic inflammatory pain conditions and peripheral neuropathies. In 2009, she joined the Peripheral Neuropathies group at IDiBE, led by Dr. Antonio Ferrer. She is currently also a professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at UMH. Dr. Devesa likewise thanked all the people who have supported her along her research and teaching career.
The event then opened to questions from the audience. Both Dr. García and Dr. Devesa highlighted their enthusiasm for teaching and the importance of research stays abroad, encouraging the young researchers attending the event to pursue such experiences.
As always, the session concluded with tapas and refreshments.
