Dr. Mayka Sanchez has a PhD in Biology-Genetics (University of Barcelona, 2002) focused on Hereditary Hemochromatosis genetic iron-overload disease. I spent more than seven years (2002-2009) as postdoctoral researcher in three international and prestigious research centres in Heidelberg, Germany (EMBL, University of Heidelberg and MMPU) working on basic research of iron metabolism. Since November 2009 I am principal investigator, first as junior group leader at IMPPC (2009-2015), then (2015-2018) as group leader at the Josep Carreras Leukaemia Research Institute (IJC) and now as Collaborating Professor and senior group leader of the Iron Metabolism: Regulation and Diseases group at Universitat Internacional de Catalunya (UIC)
https://researchgroups.uic.es/ironmetabolism.
I am the coordinator for Genetics classes in Medicine and Biomedicine at UIC, and a collaborating professor in other subjects.
Current projects of my group are: 1. Translational Research on Congenital Dyserythroipoietic Anemias (CDA), a rare hereditary anemia to improve its diagnostic and develop innovative therapies such as Gene Therapy for Type II CDA; 2. Basic Research on novel mRNA regulated by the IRP/IRE system; 3. Translational Research in the discovery of new human diseases and novel mutations in hereditary hematological and iron-related disorders and 4. Nanotechnology in hematological diseases and development of nanosensors for diagnosis and classification of anemia at the point of care.
As an independent investigator since November 2009, I obtained a total of 18 research grants (5 European, 10 National and 3 Regional) and 3 grants for congress organization. For me or members of my group we obtained 12 national or international competitive contracts and 3 international fellowships (EMBO-short stage fellowship, FEBS postdoctoral fellowship, Marie Curie contract). I have been awarded with 6 prizes. I am involved in 3 agreements with companies or patient associations.
In total I have 61 publications, including 7 divulgative articles, 12 chapter of books and 42 scientific peer-reviewed publications (24 peer-reviewed publications as independent group, 12 as 1st author, 11 as last and corresponding author, 8 as postdoc and 9 as predoc), publications in Q1: 26/39 (66.7%). Total citations: 1887 (Nov 2021). H-index: 22 and i-10-Index: 31 (Google Scholar, Oct 2021).
I am board member in national and international patient associations (AEH, EFAPH), elected member of ORPHANET and elected Secretary of the International BIOIRON Society.
I have participated in more than 80 congresses, most of them were international. I have experience in the organization of international congress, as invited chair-women in international congresses, as international and national grant reviewer and as referee and invited editor for international scientific journals.
I am co-founder and promoter of a company on hematological genetic diagnostics named BLOODGENETICS, S.L., www.bloodgenetics.com, CEO: Dr. Cristian Tornador. Our group is currently working in 2 international clinical trial. We have 2 registered European Trade Mark: HIGHFERRITIN since 18/11/2015 and BLOODGENETICS since 01/02/2018.