Invited Speakers

María José Alonso

Chair of the Women in Sciences (WIS) Group of the CRS

Former President of the Controlled Release Society (CRS)

Dept. of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Technology, USC

CIMUS Research Institute

Av. Barcelona s/n

Campus Vida -University of Santiago de Compostela (USC)

15706 Santiago de Compostela, Spain

Group Website: http://www.usc.es/grupos/mjalonsolab/

María José Alonso is Professor of Pharmaceutical Technology at the University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain. Her lab has pioneered numerous discoveries in the field of nanomedicine, notably in the area a vaccination, transmucosal drug delivery and precision medicine in oncology. She has coordinated consortia financed by the WHO, the Gates Foundation and the European Commission and has authored more than 315 scientific contributions with H factor >100. She is the inventor of 23 patent families, most of them licensed to industry and she has been directly part of 3 start-up ventures and, indirectly of 2 more. She has been among the TOP TEN in Pharmacology (THE, 2010). She has been in the “Power List” of the most influential researchers in the field of Biopharmaceuticals (The Medicine Maker). She has hold high responsibilities as Vice-rector of Research and Innovation, Trusty of the Spanish Research Council and Adviser to the Ministries of Sciences and Innovation and Health. She is now a member of the Council of the Spanish Agency of Research. She was President of the CRS in 2018-19 and she is Editor-in-Chief of the Drug Delivery and Translational Research, an official journal of the CRS. She is part of the editorial board of 12 journals. She has received 55 awards, among them the “National Research Award”, considered as the highest distinction from the Spanish Government, the Jaume I Award and the Founders, WIS and Outstanding Service Awards of the CRS, Inc. She is a member of 5 Academies in Spain and of the Royal Academy of Medicine of Belgium and of the US National Academy of Medicine (NAM). She was awarded with an “Honoris Causa” doctorate by the University of Nottingham.

Representative Publications

[1] Goldberg M., Manzi A., Conway P. et al. A nanoengineered topical transmucosal cisplatin delivery system induces anti-tumor response in animal models and patients with oral cancer. Nat Commun 13, 4829 (2022).

[2] Lundquist P., Khodus G., Zhigao N., Thwala L.N., McCartney F., Simoff I., Andersson E., Beloqui A., Mabondzo A., Robla S., Webb D.L., Hellström P.M., Keita A.V., Sima E., Csaba N., Sundbom M., Preat V., Brayden D.J., Alonso M.J., Artursson P., Barriers to the Intestinal Absorption of Four Insulin-Loaded Arginine-Rich Nanoparticles in Human and Rat, ACS Nano 16, 14210-14229 (2022).

 [3]  Dacoba T. G., Anthiya S., Berrecoso G., Fernández-Mariño I., Fernández-Varela C., Crecente-Campo J., Teijeiro-Osorio D., Torres-Andón F., Alonso M.J., Nano‐Oncologicals: A Tortoise Trail Reaching New Avenues, Adv Funct Mater 31, 2009860 (2021).

[4] Matilde Durán-Lobato, Ana María López-Estévez, Ana Sara Cordeiro, Tamara G. Dacoba, José Crecente-Campo, Dolores Torres, María José Alonso, Nanotechnologies for the delivery of biologicals: Historical perspective and current landscape, Adv Drug Delivery Rev 176, 113899 (2021).

[5] Samaridou E., Walgrave H., Salta E., Moreira Álvarez D., Castro-López V., Loza M., Alonso M.J., Nose-to-brain delivery of enveloped RNA – cell permeating peptide nanocomplexes for the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases, Biomaterials 230, 119657 (2020).

[6] Ledo A., Senra A., Rilo-Alvarez H., Borrajo E., Vidal A., Alonso M.J., Garcia-Fuentes M., mRNA-activated matrices encoding transcription factors as primers of cell differentiation in tissue engineering, Biomaterials 247 120016 (2020).