Mar Cuadrado Tejedor

Dra. Mar Cuadrado-Tejedor received her Bachelor degree of Pharmacy at the University of País Vasco (1999) and her Doctor of Pharmacy degree from the University of Navarra (2003). She completed her doctoral thesis focused on molecular basis of Parkinson's disease. After a research stay at the Pharmacology Department at Merck Sharp & Dohme (UK), she joined Teresa Gómez Isla's lab in the Department of Neurology at the University of Navarra for her postdoctoral training in Alzheimer's disease (EA). In 2005, she joined the University of Navarra as assistant professor in the Department of Anatomy, collaborating at the same time as a researcher at the Neuroscience Program at CIMA. She is currently associate professor and the director of the Pathology, Anatomy and Physiology Department at the School of Medicine of University of Navarra and researcher in the laboratory of Neurobiology of Alzheimer's disease of CIMA. Dra. Cuadrado-Tejedor combines her teaching (she teaches embryology and Anatomy at the School of Medicine and Neuroanatomy at the Master of Biomedicine) with her research work in the area of Neurosciences (AD). Her research has focused on the study of cellular and molecular bases of memory in animal models of AD with the aim of identifying new therapeutic targets and developing new pharmacological treatments that may delay or stop the progression of the disease. In relation to this, she has participated in different research projects focused on studying the molecular alterations associated with the processes of synaptic plasticity that occur after the administration of different treatments such as administration of histone deacetylase inhibitors (HDACs) and / or phosphodiesterase inhibitors (PDE). This line of work has produced 8 publications, 3 patents and two doctoral theses (2009 and 2014) co-directed with Dra. Ana García-Osta. Ultimately, her research is mainly focused in the study of different factors that could provide cognitive resilience in AD. Among them PLA2g4e has been identified as a gene that might confer resistance to dementia. We have discovered that overexpression by a viral vector of phospholipase PLA2G4E in the hippocampus may constitute a new therapy for AD. This work has led to a new patent, a European doctoral thesis in 2019 and a publication in 2020 in the journal Progress in Neurobiology (D1, IF: 11.2). We are currently working on the mechanism of action of this phospholipase in synaptic plasticity (work funded by the MINECO project PID2019-104921RB-I00) and its possible application as a new target in the treatment of dementia (work funded by the CaixaImpulse Validate 2020 program). Currently, in relation to this project, there is a doctoral thesis in progress. In summary, she is the author of 48 publications, 77% of which in first quartile journals and 22 of them with authorship. Her index h is 28. She has directed 4 doctoral theses and several final master's and final degree projects. She has three six-year research periods recognized by the ANEP: 2003-2009, 2010-2016 and 2016-2021.