Biography

I started to be interested by research in 2007, while I was a bachelor student in Biology. At that time, I got a fellowship that allowed me to become familiar to the research that Dr. Barja´s group was doing on mitochondrial oxidative stress and aging. Once I got my bachelor degree, in 2008, I got a predoctoral fellowship (FPU) in a competitive call. I carried out my PhD studies, in which I aimed to study the modulation of mitochondrial oxidative stress under methionine restriction in the diet and/or the blocking of beta-adrenergic signalling, both related to the longevity extension in rodents. In addition, I got a travel grant to spend some months in Aberdeen (UK) in Dr. Selman´s group, where I studied how the key proteins involved in longevity signalling are modified under dietary interventions. During my PhD, I published 13 original research articles (4 as first author) and 1 review, with important contributions to the field. We described for the first time the beneficial effects of methionine restriction on mitochondrial oxidative stress of aged mice as well as the beneficial effects of blocking beta adrenergic signalling on the unsaturation degree of the membranes, as well as the effect of the combination of both treatments. In addition, we also performed a lifelong study, in which mice treated with a beta blocker prevented the aging related changes in mitochondrial membrane unsaturation and immune and behavioural functions. Once I got my PhD, I got a postdoctoral contract in the University of Aarhus (DK), at Dra. Stevnsner´s group. My research was part of the Danish Aging Research Centre (DARC), a multidisciplinary approach in which different centres in Denmark were funded to study aging from different perspectives. I stablished a collaboration with medical doctors, nurses, and epidemiologists to unravel which mechanisms could be under the cognitive and physical capacities of the centenarians in Denmark. To perform my research, I become an expert in the use of the technology called Seahorse, designed to study mitochondrial function in cells. We carried out also other measurements related to DNA repair activities in blood cells from centenarians. Two publications have been been recently accepted in two high impact journals (Sanchez-Roman et al., 2022; Stevnsner and Sanchez-Roman, 2022) and more publications are expected to be published soon. In addition, I also studied a premature aging disease, called Cockayne Syndrome, in which a defect in a protein involved in the DNA repair pathway leads to metabolic and mitochondrial dysfunction, already published (Sanchez-Roman et al., 2018). Apart from that, my expertise with the technology called seahorse has also given me the opportunity to collaborate with other groups and publish an article in a high-quality journal (Farup et al., 2020). I moved back to Spain at the beginning of 2018 as a lecturer in Universidad Europea de Madrid to teach Physiology in health sciences and I had the opportunity to collaborate with Dr. Gredilla in a study where we show a correlation between mitochondrial DNA repair pathway and longevity in different species. I got my current position as a profesor ayudante doctor in Facultad de Biología (UCM) in September 2021. This has already allowed me to design a research project together with Dr. Chamorro and Dra. Lopez-Torres, that has been awarded with the XXV Research award from the Instituto de Estudios del Huevo, granted with 10.000 euros, that will allow us to start a fruitful collaboration.