Antonio Pineda-Lucena

APL obtained his PhD at the Centro de Investigaciones Biológicas (CSIC, Madrid, Spain) under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Guillermo Giménez Gallego in 1995. After that, he moved to the Netherlands (EMBO and Marie Sklodowska-Curie grants) to work as a postdoctoral researcher with Prof. Dr. Cees Hilbers at the Radboud Universiteit (Nijmegen, The Netherlands) where he pursued further training in molecular biology, protein chemistry and NMR spectroscopy. Later on, he obtained a permanent position as an Associate Scientist at the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research (Princess Margaret Hospital, Toronto, Canada), the canadian reference centre for cancer treatment, where he worked in the structural characterization of oncoproteins and tumor suppressors, as well as in the development of new technologies for structural genomics. After declining different academic positions at the USA (University of Maryland, University of Wisconsin), APL accepted a position as an Associate Principal Scientist in a pharmaceutical company, AstraZeneca, in Alderley Park (Manchester, United Kingdom), the biggest research centre of this company in the oncology area. During that time, his efforts focused on the structural characterization of pharmaceutically relevant targets, and on the design of drugs using NMR and computational chemistry studies. Moreover, APL belonged to a core group within the company responsible for evaluating and selecting targets involved in cell invasion and metastasis. APL was recruited in 2005 by the Centro de Investigación Príncipe Felipe (CIPF, Valencia, Spain) to lead, as a Principal Investigator, the Structural Biochemistry Laboratory and the NMR facility. In may 2015, APL joined the Instituto de Investigación Sanitaria La Fe (Valencia, Spain) as Director of the Drug Discovery Unit and, at the same time, led the Joint Unit in Clinical Metabolomics CIPF/IIS La Fe. Four years later, APL was offered different senior management (Director of Translational Research, Deputy Director – november 2020 –) and scientific (Director of the Molecular Therapeutics Program, Senior Investigator of the Medicinal Chemistry laboratory) positions at the Centro de Investigación Médica Aplicada (CIMA, Pamplona, Spain) and joined the institution in may 2019. In september, 2022, APL was promoted to Scientific Director at CIMA. Laboratory funding has been obtained during these years through different competitive national (GVA, MEC/MICINN/MINECO, ISCIII, Fundación Genoma España, etc.) and international (MSCA actions, ERA-NETs, European Science Foundation, H2020, etc.) agencies/calls, as well as from private institutions (Fundación Mutua Madrileña, Fundación GentxGent, Fundación para la Investigación en Urología, Fundación Fuentes Dutor, etc.). The group maintain very active collaborations with Hospitals (Hospital Universitario y Politécnico La Fe, Hospital Clínic de Barcelona, Instituto Valenciano de Oncología, Hospital 12 de Octubre, Clínica Universidad de Navarra, etc.), pharmaceutical (Janssen-Cilag, AstraZeneca, Moderna, Roche, etc.), and technological (Bruker BioSpin) companies, as well as with different investment funds (Ysios Capital, Asabys Partners, HealthTech 180, Columbus Venture Partners, Inveready, SODENA, etc.). APL ́s current interests focus on taking advantage of the collective knowledge developed over the last 15 years in different areas (omics, bioinformatics, nmr, molecular biology, protein chemistry, cell biology, in-vitro/in-vivo studies, computational chemistry, drug design, etc.) to tackle unmet clinical needs in different therapeutic areas.