María Blanco Prieto, professor of the School of Pharmacy and Nutrition at the University of Navarra, has been appointed academician of the Royal Academy of Pharmacy of France - one of the most prestigious entities in the world in its field - in recognition of the international character of her work. Also, recently, this researcher from Puebla de Trives (Orense) has been appointed academician of the Royal Academy of Pharmacy of Galicia.

María Blanco Prieto studied Pharmacy at the University of Santiago de Compostela and did her doctoral thesis at the University of Paris-Sud through a scholarship of the French "Ministère de teaching Superior e research". The topic of his research, which received the extraordinary award "L'Académie Nationale de Pharmacie", was the formulation of microparticles with a neuropeptide and their administration in the rat brain. This research was extended for three years at the ETH ( Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich, Switzerland).

partnership At present, María Blanco maintains a close relationship with researchers in France, where she is an expert of the "Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR)" and the "Institut Universitaire de France". She also participates in a European project together with her director of thesis , Professor Patrick Couvreur, from the University Paris-Sud, and both co-direct at the University of Navarra the doctoral thesis of Carlos Rodríguez Nogales on the use of nanomedicines in pediatric cancer. The project is funded by the association Española Contra el Cáncer (AECC).

Nanomedicine and controlled drug delivery systems

In her career, the professor of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Technology has focused her research on the area of nanomedicine and controlled drug release systems, where she has worked on the design and development of micro and nanoparticles of different types. These systems are applied in the treatment of cancer, cardiovascular and neurodegenerative diseases: "We aim to direct the drugs to their site of action, in the case of antitumor drugs to cancer cells, avoiding healthy cells and thus reducing their side effects, stresses the researcher from the University of Navarra.

María Blanco is author or co-author of more than 110 articles in scientific journals, 5 patents, 16 chapters in different specialized books and more than 150 communications in congresses, many of them as invited speaker . She is a member of committee publishing house of several scientific journals, including "Cancer Letters". His research has received several awards from both national and international entities.