Biography

Dr. Manuel J. Santander has strong expertise in the design and development of colloidal systems with biomedical applications. His multidisciplinary background began with his Degree in Chemistry at the University of Granada, where he then got his PhD. in the Department of Applied Physics. During his PhD did a one year stay at the research group of Prof. C.M. Lehr from the Department of Biopharmacy and Pharmaceutical Technology from the University of Saarland (Germany) supported by a PhD. Student grant from the Marie Curie EST programme. This knowledge was highly valuable for his pre- and postdoctoral period in Pharmaceutical Technology, to adapt the characteristics of the systems to the requirements for each application. This research is based on the design of MADS (Modular Architecture Delivery Systems), a concept that considers the modular architecture of the nanosystems for adjusting them to the encapsulated molecule, the characteristics of the different biological barriers to overcome, or to the specific tissue or organ to be treated. This research has yielded 8 articles at the first decile of their area (see CVA), as well as two patents, one owned by the company BASF (WO2010084088A3) and the other by the University of Santiago de Compostela (US10471020B2). Along the last 10 years Dr. Manuel J. Santander has published 30 articles (most of them in Q1 journals). Dr. Manuel J. Santander has developed his research work in three research centers: 1) University of Santiago de Compostela 2010/13 (Postdoctoral contract of the Angeles Alvariño program (Xunta de Galicia); Postdoctoral contract with the TRANSINT project (FP7; IP. Cat. M.J. Alonso)); 2) University College London 2010/11 (under the supervision of Dr. I. Uchegbu and Dr. A. Schätzlein) thanks to the Angeles Alvariño contract; 3) University of Castilla-La Mancha where he joined the School of Pharmacy in 2014 to teach Pharmaceutical Technology. In these last five years, Dr. Manuel J. Santander has applied his scientific background in MADS to determine the effect that the composition of the systems has on their interaction with the intestinal barrier. Recently, he has published a study that describes a two-component system that is able to be retained at the enterocytes where it has antioxidant effect; these results were obtained in a collaboration with Dra. Ana Beloqui from the Université Catolique de Louvain (UCL), who supervised the biological evaluation. The localisation of the systems at the enterocytes would be highly interesting for the treatment of intestinal bowel diseases in order to avoid systemic drug levels.
Dr Santander has also collaborated with Dr E. Lopez-Cano (UCLM) in the development of a software to properly analyse the diffusion of colloidal systems across the intestinal mucosal barrier by particle tracking. This microscopy-software tandem, implemented by Dr Santander at the UCLM, presents a great potential to properly understand the particle-biological barrier interaction. As result, Dr Santander has been able to demonstrate the important role played by the oral protein corona on the capacity of a formulation overcome this biological barrier.
The expertise of Dr Santander in the use of new natural antioxidant matrices for the development of MADS has helped them to establish a new line of research in collaboration with Dr R. Fernandez-Santos (UCLM). Supported by the MINECO project AGL2017-85603-P. A project focused on the use of these platforms to protect spermatozoa from reactive oxygen species. The main outcomes of this collaboration have been published in Free Radical Biology and Medicine.