Fernando De La Cuesta

Marie Curie Research Fellow

Past PhD students supervised

Ms Ilaria Passalacqua

Research summary

I lead a project funded by the EU Comission studying the role of extracellular vesicles in pulmonary hypertension. I am a collaborator in projects of proteomics applied to gene therapy viral vectors, Single-Cell RNA-Seq and lncRNAs. 

Current research interests

The main aim of my research is to study extracellular vesicle mediated cell-to-cell communication between human smooth muscle cells and endothelial cells, evaluate its relevance in vascular injury in pulmonary arterial hypertension, and determine the significance of long non-coding RNA in this crosstalk. For imaging EV transfer among vascular cells, I have optimised a pioneer approach based on Cre-loxP recombination which results in a fluorescent colour switch of cells upon EV uptake. The RNA cargoes present in EVs are being analysed by RNA-Seq. With the combination of both imaging and molecular approaches we are unvealing the biological relevance of EVs in pulmonary arterial hypertension.

Current project grants

EU Comission Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Individual Fellowship 2016 (EV-LNC)

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