Biography

Beatriz graduated in Biological Science (1995-2000) and got her PhD in Science (2005-2009). The previous years to her PhD, she was working for 2 years in Scotland (Ross Breeders, Aviagen Vet. Lab.) as a Virology Lab. Technician, doing molecular biology and cell culture to isolate different avian viruses, after that, she was working for 1 year in Barcelona as Lab. technician doing microbiology to isolate different bacteria spp. Then, she got a competitive PhD grant for 4 years to do her PhD at Cadiz University which was about the study of the innate and adaptive immune system of a fish (Pagrus auriga) with the purpose to be applied in Aquaculture. During her PhD she did a 3 months stay in Viterbo, Italy (University degli Studi della Tuscia) to learn immunology techniques and where she isolated and characterized an antibody to be used for the monitoring of diseases in Pagrus Auriga. She got the first Prize for a communication at the European Conference of Aquaculture-2008. After finishing her PhD she moved to the Hematology field specifically to the Bone Marrow Transplantation group in Hospital Virgen del Rocio (Seville). She continued her interest in the immune system and she studied constitutional genetic variants of the innate immune system associated to the clinical outcome of patients submitted to allogeneic stem cell transplantation. During this period she got the first prize to a communication in the Andalousian Conference of Hematology (2010). She moved to Hospital Clinic (Barcelona) where she got a competitive post-doctoral grant (Sara Borrell) for 4 years and she continued the same research in the Stem Cell Transplantation group for a year, then she did a 2 years stay at MD Anderson Cancer Center (Houston, TX) where she started to study natural killer cells derived from cord blood to be used as immune-therapy option for stem cell transplantation. Now, back in Barcelona, at the Josep Carreras Leukemia Research Institute she continues studying the use of natural killer cells to improve the outcome of both, allogeneic and autologous stem cell transplantation.