Cristina Malagelada

Cristina Malagelada Grau was born in Girona on January 9, 1976. She obtained her degree and Ph.D. in Biochemistry at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. During her thesis, she studied the molecular mechanisms that lead to neuronal apoptotic cell death in cerebral ischemia. In 2003, she started her first postdoctoral stay in the group of Dr. Nikolaos Robakis in the Department of Psychiatry at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City (USA) studying molecular mechanisms involved in Alzheimer’s disease. In 2004, she started her second postdoctoral stay at Columbia University in New York in the group of Dr. Lloyd A. Greene, studying the role of a protein called RTP801/REDD1, in neuronal cell death in cellular and animal models of Parkinson’s disease (PD). She described that RTP801/REDD1 was proapoptotic in neurons by inactivating both mTOR and Akt signaling in PD models. In 2010 she came back to Barcelona with a Ramon y Cajal contract from the Spanish Ministry of Economy to establish her laboratory at the Faculty of Medicine Campus Clínic of the University of Barcelona.

In 2017, she became an Associate professor of Biochemistry at the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences (Campus Clínic) of the University of Barcelona. She extended her studies of the mTOR pathway to Huntington’s disease, neurogenesis, and neuroinflammation associated with Alzheimer’s disease.