Scientific Advisory Board

José Maria Palacios, PhD.     President
Dr. Palacios is the Director of The Agency for Assessing and Marketing Research Results (AVCRI) at the University of Barcelona and former Executive Director of Research & Development at Almirall Prodesfarma, S.A., where he spent more than 14 years, managed more than 500 people and brought several products to the market. Before that, Dr. Palacios worked in Preclinical Research at Sandoz A.G. (Basel, Switzerland) as Head of Laboratory Project Leader and Member of the Steering Committee. In his wide and international career, Dr. Palacios has generated a significant number of scientific contributions (464 papers at the ISI Database) and has been awarded with the first DuPont Prize for Receptor Research.

Ignacio Manzanares, PhD.
Dr. Manzanares is Scientific Director of Najeti, one of our investors. He was General Manager at the Catalan Institute of Chemical Research (ICIQ) and has worked in the pharma industry for more than 14 years, from Project Management in the early days of Pharma Mar (Zeltia Group) to Director of Research & Development. Dr. Manzanares has a broad experience in the oncology area and he has collaborated extensively with Urbana-Champain University and Harvard University.

Jaume Piulats, PhD.
Dr. Piulats was the founder and former director of the "Laboratorio de Bioinvestigación" - Merck Farma y Quimica S.A. (Merck KGaA) located in the Parc Cientific de Barcelona. His previous experience as pharmacologist was at the Cambridge University, London University and Laboratorios Carlo Erba. He is associate professor at the University of Barcelona and University Pompeu Fabra.

Pere Gascón, PhD.
Dr. Gascón is the "Director del Servicio de Oncología Médica" and scientific coordinator of the "Instituto Clínico de Enfermedades Hemato-Oncológicas" (ICMHO) of the Hospital Clínic of Barcelona. He obtained his PhD at the the New York University Medical Center and has extensive experience as a medical doctor on several positions in USA such as the Downstate Medical Center (New York), National Institutes of Health (Bethesda), Clinical Haematology Branco and Washington University-Barnes Hospital (Saint Louis). He was Head of Haematology and later Head of Haematology-Oncology at the the New Jersey Medical School. In 1995 he was awarded as "medical doctor of the year" on the state of New Jersey.

Prof. Ernest Giralt
Prof. Giralt is a prestigious scientist in the field of peptide synthesis, structure determination and NMR studies of complex molecular recognition processes. He is Professor of Organic Chemistry at the University of Barcelona and is head of the Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology Programme. In 1990 he was visiting Professor at the University of California (San Diego) and Research Associate at the Scripps Research Institute (San Diego, California). Dr. Giralt has published around 300 papers, 6 patents, review articles and books. He is one of the founding members of the European Peptide Society. He is editor of The Journal of Peptide Science and is on the editorial board of several other journals.

Dr. Juan Aymamí
Prof. Aymamí is a leading scientist in the field of structural biology. He has worked for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the New York State Department of Health (NIH), Cambridge University, the Institute of Cancer Research (UK) and the Polytechnic University of Catalunya. His major contributions have been in the field of polymer chemistry, modelling, 3D reconstitution by Electron microscopy, nucleic acid structure and drug-DNA interactions.

Prof. Miquel Coll
Prof. Coll is an internationally recognised scientist in the field of protein crystallography, having spent much of his scientific career at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Max Planck Institut and the European Molecular Biology Laboratory. Prof. Coll heads the prestigious protein crystallography group of the Spanish Research Council (CSIC).