Marta Massanella

Marta Massanella is graduated in Biology at Pompeu Fabra University (Barcelona) and completed her PhD in Biomedicine at IrsiCaixa under the supervision of Dr. Julià Blanco in 2012.

During her PhD, she characterised the immunodiscordant response to antiretroviral therapy (ART) in individuals on HIV treatment and was involved in different ART intensification studies. Then joined Dr. Douglas Richman’s lab at the University of California San Diego as a postdoctoral fellow, where she developed several studies to quantify the size of the HIV reservoir.

In 2015, she joined Dr. Nicolas Chomont’s lab to conduct HIV reservoir studies at CR-CHUM (Montreal, Canada). His studies focused on the characterisation of different CD4 T-cell subtypes in the maintenance of the HIV reservoir. She also participated in different clinical projects to determine the influence of the timing of ART initiation on the establishment and persistence of the HIV reservoir in adults and paediatric population.

In 2020 she joined IrsiCaixa as Principal Researcher to understand the main mechanisms that contribute to the particular and accelerated ageing of the immune system in the HIV-positive and ART-treated population.