MADRID 2019 The Future of AGEING

María de Ceballos is Scientific Investigator, specialized in Biochemical Pharmacology, investigating at the Cajal Institute, CSIC, one of the oldest institutions devoted to the study of the Nervous System in Europe, founded by the Spanish Nobel Prize Cajal. She studied Biological Sciences at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, and she joined the Institute of Medicinal Chemistry, CSIC, to perform her PhD thesis, and her first postdoctoral period.

She spent a postdoctoral stay at the Dept. of Neurology, Institute of Psychiatry, London, under the direction of Profs. C.D.Marsden and P.Jenner (1984-1986), and continued the collaboration back in Spain, at the Cajal Institute (CSIC), thanks to an EU funded project. As a pharmacologist she has always been involved in the study of the mechanism of action of drugs used in the treatment of important diseases such as hypertension, depression, schizophrenia or pain. From her postdoctoral stay in London she got interested in the investigation of neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases.

She has established her research group at the Cajal Institute, and by the 90s she began to study the physiopathology of Alzheimer’s disease (AD), carried out both in post-mortem brain tissue from patients and in experimental models, in vitro and in vivo. Regarding pharmacological interventions for AD she has focused on compounds with anti-inflammatory activity, on the role of glia in neurodegeneration and as cellular target for neurodegenerative diseases. In particular she has investigated the endocannabinoid system in AD, and the beneficial effects of cannabinoids. The biomedical interest and translational vocation of her investigation led her to collaborate with different Medicinal Chemistry groups in search of therapies against pain, schizophrenia, depression and PD or AD.