Gisela Nogales-Gadea

Gisela Nogales-Gadea studied Biology at the University of Barcelona in 2002. She did her PhD in Glycogenosis type V, also known as McArdle disease, in the neuromuscular and mitochondrial pathology group in Institut de Recerca Vall d´Hebron, in Barcelona, under the supervision of Dr. Antoni Lluis Andreu Periz and Dr. Ramon Martí. During her PhD, she did a short stay in the Neurology Department of Columbia University, where she started the development of a mouse model for McArdle disease, under the supervision of Dr. Salvatore DiMauro and Dr. Michio Hirano. During the PhD she finished the generation of this mouse model, only mouse model available for this disorder, and studied in deep the pathomechanisms of this glycogenosis. After her PhD, she joined the Neuromuscular Disease Unit in Hospital de Sant Pau, in Barcelona, to study autoimmune neuromuscular diseases under the supervision of Dr. Isabel Illa. During that time, she identified auto-antibodies that target axo-glial proteins that are the cause of chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy (CIDP). In September 2013, she moved to Maastrich, in the Netherlands, to the laboratory of Dr. Marc de Baets, Dr. Pilar Martínez-Martínez and Dr. Mario Losen, to further increase her expertise, by joining different projects in Myasthenia Gravis.

In January 2015, she obtained a competitive research grant to start a research laboratory in Neuromuscular Diseases in the Institut d’Investigació Germans Trias i Pujol, Badalona, Barcelona, Spain. In this project, she counts with the participation of Dr. Jaume Coll (Chief of Neuromuscular Clinics) and Dr. Guillem Pintos (Chief of Neuropediatrics Clinics). In this project, they will analyze the effects of antisense oligonucleotides therapy in Steinert Disease.

She has published over 36 peer-reviewed papers and obtained 2 competitive national research grants. She has been invited to different lectures in scientific international meetings, and she has participated in different patients’ meetings from the Spanish association for Glycogenosis. The purpose of her research is to find treatments for the neuromuscular diseases that have no cure yet.