Drug Discovery for Leishmaniasis

Dr Luis Rivas currently belongs to the scientific staff of the Center for Biological Research (Madrid, Spain) inside the Spanish National Council for Scientific Research Organization (Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, CSIC). He earned his PhD in Biochemistry (University Complutense of Madrid, 1984). After completing his PhD, he moved to the Weizmann Institute of Science, (Rehovot, Israel) and to Yale University (CT, USA) to complete his formation as a postdoctoral fellow. He focused on the design of antimicrobial peptides and on cell penetrating peptides as new drugs and vehicles for Leishmania chemotherapy. Another line is the elucidation of the mode of action of drugs targeting the bioenergetic mechanism of the parasite. He published 80 publications in referred international journals, mostly addressing Leishmania chemotherapy and molecular basis of peptide-pathogen interaction.

Dr Carmen Gil is staff scientist at Center for Biological Research of Spanish National Council for Research (CSIC) with a background in Medicinal Chemistry and Pharmacy. She received her Ph.D. from Complutense University of Madrid in 2001. After a postdoctoral appointment at Bonn University (Germany) she joined the CSIC. Her research is oriented to the discovery and development of new small-molecules as innovative target-based drugs and her research areas have been focused on phosphodiesterase and kinase inhibitors as innovative drug candidates for neurodegenerative diseases. She is involved in different projects that apply her background and experience in the development of specific parasite phosphodiesterase and kinase inhibitors in the fight for neglected parasitic diseases. She is author of more than sixty scientific publications, has four active patents in the field and has contributed to several books.