Dr. Nerea Zabaleta , Principal Investigator, Center for Applied Medical Research (CIMA), University of Navarra (Spain)

Dr. Zabaleta recently joined CIMA Universidad de Navarra as a researcher, and the main focus of her research is the generation of novel gene delivery vehicles to enable the advancement of in vivo gene editing for inherited kidney disease. Dr. Zabaleta performed her studies at the University of Navarra (BS in Biochemistry in 2013 and MS in Biomedical Research in 2014). She performed her PhD in the laboratory of Dr. Gloria González-Aseguinolaza at CIMA (2014-2018) on the development of in vivo gene-editing approaches to treat primary hyperoxaluria, an inherited metabolic liver disease. In 2019, she started a postdoctoral fellowship in the laboratory of Dr. Luk Vandenberghe at the Grousbeck Gene Therapy Center at Harvard Medical School, which lasted 3 years. During her postdoc, she developed a novel vaccine platform based on immunogenic adeno-associated vectors (AAV) and this experience led to her promotion to Instructor in 2022. As an independent researcher, first as Instructor (2022-2023) and later as Assistant Professor (2024), Dr. Zabaleta studied the biology behind the biomanufacturing of AAV with the goal of improving the production of this important clinical vector and she also focused her effort on the capsid engineering to generate heart-targeting AAV capsids. After obtaining a Ramón y Cajal grant, Dr. Zabaleta relocated her lab at CIMA Universidad de Navarra. She has 18 peer-reviewed publication (4 as last author) and she is co-inventor on 4 patents.