Juan Carlos Gabaldón Receives the Gabriel Rufí Award for the Best Doctoral Thesis in Infectious Diseases

ISGlobal researcher Juan Carlos Gabaldón has received the Gabriel Rufí Award for the best doctoral thesis in the field of infectious diseases, presented by the Catalan Society of Infectious Diseases and Clinical Microbiology (SCMIMC). The award recognises his research on the pathogenesis of Chagas disease.

His thesis, supervised by Julio Alonso Padilla and Quim Gascon, examines the role of lipids in cardiac damage associated with this infection and their potential as biomarkers to improve clinical monitoring. The work describes an enzyme from the parasite Trypanosoma cruzi, phospholipase A2 (PLA2), as a virulence factor involved in the infection of mammalian cells. It also identifies a group of lipids detectable in the blood of infected patients that could enable early assessment of their response to antiparasitic treatment. These findings lay the groundwork for an ongoing project seeking to validate the clinical utility of these molecules in a large group of patients recruited in Spain and Bolivia.

Juan Carlos Gabaldón’s scientific career is closely linked to Venezuela, his home country, where he trained as a physician at the Universidad de Los Andes in the city of Mérida, and where Chagas disease is a major public health problem that receives little attention and funding. Before joining ISGlobal, Juan Carlos completed a master’s degree in Medical Parasitology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) and worked at the University of Navarra in Pamplona.

“I dedicate this award, like my thesis, to Venezuela, where I took my first steps in biomedical research and where I hope to contribute, sooner rather than later, to controlling Chagas disease and other neglected diseases,” said the researcher.

This award highlights the value of research aimed at better understanding the metabolic effects of certain neglected tropical diseases, which offer opportunities to develop tools that can improve their diagnosis, treatment and monitoring.