Associate Professor at the Medical Sciences Department of the University of Girona.
After graduating with honors in Biochemistry, I was awarded a predoctoral fellowship from the Catalan Government and I started my PhD studies under the supervision of Dr. Ferran Azorín at the IBMB-CSIC. My thesis was devoted to the study of transcription regulation in Drosophila melanogaster. This project resulted in two first-author articles (Nucleic Acids Res 2002; J Biol Chem 2004) and other important publications.
I continued my scientific career with a postdoctoral position in the laboratory of Dr. Melanie Ott at the prestigious Gladstone Institutes-University of California, San Francisco. As a postdoc I successfully obtained funding from several grants (a postdoctoral fellowship from the Spanish Government, a grant from amfAR, and a Basic Science Award from CFAR). My research sought to understand HIV-1 transcriptional regulation, with a strong interest in posttranslational modifications of the viral transactivator Tat as potential antiviral therapeutic targets. I identified SIRT1 as a Tat deacetylase and coactivator of HIV transcription, and led to the current model in which cycles of Tat acetylation and deacetylation are necessary for Tat transactivation. This work was published in a prestigious journal (PLoS Biol, 2005), and has been a reference for later HIV and sirtuin studies. My following studies on HIV Tat uncovered Set7/9 as a Tat lysine methyltransferase and checkpoint modulator of Tat transcriptional activity (Cell Host Microbe 2010; Methods 2011; PLoS Path 2011; J Biol Chem 2016). These studies generated two patent applications and a collaboration with JT-Pharmaceuticals, Inc..
In 2010, I joined the Cardiovascular Genetics Group (IDIBGI-University of Girona). Here, I am merging my years of valuable experience and knowledge in transcription regulation to the study of yet unsolved problems in the field of inherited cardiac arrhythmias. I have obtained funding as a PI from the 7PM Program and the Spanish Government. I initiated a research group to study the molecular mechanisms of sodium channel expression and their role in cardiac diseases. We identified arginine methylation as a novel post-translational modification of the cardiac sodium channel (J Proteome Research 2011; FEBS Letters 2013; J Mol Cell Card 2014; Amino Acids 2015) and reported novel mechanisms of transcriptional regulation of the cardiac sodium channel (J Mol Cell Card 2017; Channels 2017, IJMS 2021). Recently, we have identified a common haplotype associated with Brugada syndrome risk, an important finding for its potential implications in Brugada syndrome risk stratification (Cell Reports Medicine, 2021). As a biomedical researcher and university professor, I am deeply involved in the training of undergraduate, master and PhD students. I have directed three Doctoral Theses, eight Master Theses and four Final Degree Projects. Furthermore, I am committed in transferring my knowledge and experience to students and young scientists as well as in helping to awaken scientific interest to children.
I currently teach at the School of Medicine as well as at the Master of Molecular Biology and Biomedicine. Since 2019, I held the post of Academic Secretary of the Faculty of Medicine, vice-dean of the Faculty of Medicine and vice-rector of Student Affairs, Mobility and Employment (2021-present).