The Materials for Medicine and Biotechnology group grows with new members

Ana Espinosa, María Salvador, Esther Benayas, Marta Toldos, Julia Martínez y Belén Corrales just joined the group lead by Puerto Morales.

The Materials for Medicine and Biotechnology (MaMBIO) group, located at the Institute of Materials Science of Madrid (ICMM), CSIC, celebrates the arrival of new members who will contribute new points of view in their work on materials for Health, line of research in which this group is framed.

Led by the research professor Puerto Morales, many of these new members had already passed through the group in different formative periods (from JAEIntro scholarships and bachelor's and master's projects to doctoral stays), and now they have chosen to return to continue their training in a leading group that also stands out for the good relationship between its members.

Ana Espinosa is one of the new additions, and she does so thanks to a Ramón y Cajal contract after having passed through various research centers in France and Spain. She studied Physics at the Complutense University of Madrid and received her Ph.D. from the Autonomous University of the same city, and now applies that knowledge to biomedicine. His project for the ICMM is the study of multimodal thermal nanotherapies, that is, the use of nanotechnology (with metallic materials such as iron oxide, gold, and silver) with applications in medicine. "They can be materials that carry out a therapeutic mission when activated from the outside," he exemplifies.

María Salvador is another of the great arrivals to the group. After winning a Margarita Salas scholarship, this chemical engineer from the University of Valladolid, and a Ph.D. in Biotechnology from the University of Oviedo, she works to "make the synthesis of nanoparticles greener," he explains. Its objective is to work for a more sustainable future, with applied research that can reach society. The rest of the new members say the same, thinking about a green future is what moves them to work every day.

The researcher Montserrat Rivas, a visiting professor at the University of Oviedo who will be at the ICMM until the summer and whose research work is focused on magnetic sensors for the rapid detection of different important biomolecules in the detection of diseases such as cancer, has also just joined.

Esther Benayas, Julia Martínez, and Marta Toldos are developing their doctoral theses in this group after having completed their respective studies in Biomedical Engineering, Biotechnology, Biochemistry, and Biomaterials. They have already been through the group before, both in master's and degree projects, and they all agree that the research, professional and human quality of the scientists (they especially mention Puerto Morales and Conchi Serrano) is what made them want to continue in the group and do his doctoral thesis with them. Julia, in fact, has just joined the European Pathfinder Piezo4Spine project coordinated by Serrano, where they will work on nanomedicine for neural regeneration.

The 'little one' of the group is Belén Corrales, who has just started her Master's Thesis after doing her two TFGs at MaMBIO. Their work will focus on obtaining biodiesel with nanoparticles and nanocatalysts, which once again puts the need to investigate for "a greener and more sustainable future" at the center of the table, they all agree.

The Materials for Medicine and Biotechnology Group (MaMBIO) is integrated into the Department of Energy, Environment, and Health and is one of the bastions of the Center's line of research in Materials for Health. Its members focus their efforts on the search for new perspectives on the synthesis, structure, and function of materials, and their main research areas are the preparation of nanomaterials (mainly nanoparticles), their modification by different strategies, and their stabilization; they also work on the structural, colloidal and magnetic characterization of these materials and, finally, they design and develop 3D biomaterials for tissue regeneration and drug delivery.

All the fields in which they work are closely related and aim to provide new knowledge on the properties of nanomaterials and their application in fields such as nanomedicine, tissue engineering, catalysis, magnetic devices, and sensors.

-- Ángela R. Bonachera (text) and Carlos Arroyo/Morgan (photo) -- ICMM Communication Unit --