Applied Microbiology

Biography

Dr Fernando de la Calle is currently the Head of the Microbiology Dpt. within Drug Discovery (R&D) at PharmaMar, biopharma involved in the development and commercialization of anticancer drugs of marine origin. He received his Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from UAM (Madrid) in 1998. He also completed an Executive-MBA at IDE-CESEM (Madrid) in 2005. He has more than 25 years’ experience working in drug discovery from marine microorganisms. He is an Expert in Applied Biotechnology, Molecular characterization of Bacterial Biodiversity and the use of Biotechnology tools for Drug Discovery . Co-author of the current hemisynthetic process for manufacturing the anticancer Yondelis®, the first European marine derived compound approved. In addition, he has been external advisor for biotechnology issues to the Spanish Government (INCUAL), current member of the International Advisory Group of european ERA-NET for Marine Biotechnology and Biodiversity, reviewer for H2020 and ERA-NET projects and the scientific contact person from PharmaMar for FP7/H2020 EU projects related to Marine Biodiversity such as MAMBA, MaCuMBA, MicroB3 and INMARE as WP leader. Principal Investigator in more than 10 other nationally funded projects.

Research Interest

Marine Biotechnology, Drug Discovery from Microorganisms, Microbial Diversity and Genomics, Applied Microbiology.