Natalia Sánchez receives an award from the L'Oréal-Unesco "For Women in Science" programme
A research by Natalia Sánchez from the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the UAB, was granted an award by the L'Oréal-UNESCO "For Women in Science" programme, which every year awards the most trailblazing projects of five researchers aged under 40. The awardees, who this year all belong to the life sciences sector, receive a cash prize of 15,000 euros and have the mission to make femal leadership in science more visible.
Sánchez was awarded for her research into "Microbiota and Neurodegenerative Diseases", whose objective was to study the relation between intestinal microbiota and the development of neurodegenerative diseases. These types of diseases affect over nine million Europeans and in many cases lead to the individuals becoming disabled or even fullly dependent.
The research team searched for possible prions among the coded proteins found in the microbiome of the digestive system. Then, using a test tube, they verified whether the selected candidates were capable of aggregating and if they could transmit this aggregation to human proteins. Finally, they analysed neuronal cells and live models to see whether these prions in the microbiota could produce signs of neurodegenerative disease. The research could influence our way of understanding neurodegenerative diseases and may inspire alternative therapies used to prevent and treat them.
Sánchez's research work was selected by a jury made up of scientific experts from different areas of the life sciences: Maria Antònia Blasco, director of the National Cancer Research Centre; Maria Vallet, professor in Inorganic Chemistry at the Complutense University of Maddrid and full member of the Royal Academies of Engineering and Pharmacy; and Rafael Garesse, professor in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and former rector of the Universidad Autònoma de Madrid.
An international career
Sánchez holds a PhD in Biotechnology from the UAB and has done research stays at the Netherlands Institute for Systems Biology and the Institute of Chemical and Biological Technology of Portugal. She also spent five years working at the Molecular Biology Lab in Cambridge, where she was awarded an FEBS Long-Term Fellowship and a Marie Curie Intra-European Fellowship, and where her research earned her the MRC Centenary Award. Following that, she spent another five years at the Centre for Genomic Regulation in Barcelona before becoming a Ramón y Cajal researcher and director of a national R&D&i project.
Her research has focused on compounds capable of monitoring and modulating protein aggregations. Protein aggregation affects cellular health and the interaction of proteins with the bacteria surrounding them, among many other aspects.
Life and Materials Science
Each year, the L'Oréal-UNESCO "For Women in Science" programme awards five eminent female scientists from around the world, one for each continent. Spain has formed part of the call for over two decades, which until now has provided support to the career of over 77 women scientists. Each year the award goes alternately to scientists from either the life sciences or the materials sciences field, and are accompanied by a cash prize of 100,000 euros in research funding.