Mònica Roldán Molina

I am a physician in the Genetic and Molecular Medicine Department, Head of the translational Confocal Microscopy Unit at SJD Barcelona Children's Hospital, located in the Pathology Department, and a lecturer at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya.

Every day brings challenges in conducting research in the field of rare and difficult-to-diagnose diseases. Currently, I am working to develop unique methods that combine advanced microscopy technologies and artificial intelligence imaging analysis to create new diagnostic tools. This involves work on diagnostic methods for diseases such as Ullrich congenital muscular dystrophy, Bethlem myopathy, Duchenne muscular dystrophy, Becker muscular dystrophy and mitochondrial diseases, as well as haematological diseases such as thalassaemia and spherocytosis.

Training

• Accreditation from the Catalan University Quality Assurance Agency as a Lecturer, 2011.
• PhD in Biology, Faculty of Pharmacy, Universitat de Barcelona, 2008.
• Diploma of Advanced Studies in the Medicines, Food and Health PhD Programme, Faculty of Pharmacy, Universitat de Barcelona, 2003.
• Experimental Master in Pharmaceutical Sciences, Faculty of Pharmacy, Universitat de Barcelona, 2000.
• Degree in Biological Sciences, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 1996.

International experience

• Centro de Investigación y de Estudios Avanzados, an advanced studies and research centre, Instituto Politécnico Nacional, Mexico City, 2016.
• Advanced Optical Microscopy Unit, Instituto de Ecología (INECOL), an ecology institute, Mexico City, 2016.
• Iztapalapa Unit, Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, Mexico City, 2014.
• Laboratory for Advanced Microscopy Bioimaging Spectroscopy (LAMBS-MicroScoBio), Genoa, Italy, 2007.

Scientific activity

• Member of the Paediatric Neurosciences research group, SJD Research Institute, 2017-2020.
• Coordination group for the Red Española de Microscopía Óptica Avanzada (REMOA), a Spanish network of advanced optical microscopy, 2009-present.

Publications

• Castillo-Ecija H, Monterrubio C, Pascual-Pastó G et al. 2020. Treatment-driven selection of chemoresistant Ewing sarcoma tumors with limited drug distribution [published online ahead of print, 2020 Jun 1]. J Control Release; 324:440-449. doi:10.1016/j.jconrel.2020.05.032
• Casanova X, Roldán M and Subirà ME. 2020. Analysis of cut marks on ancient human remains using confocal profilometer Journal of Historical Archaeology & Anthropological Sciences. 5-1, pp. 8-26. ISSN 2573-2897.
• Unzueta U et al. 2020. Self-assembling as regular nanoparticles dramatically minimizes photobleaching of tumour-targeted GFP. Acta Biomaterialia. Elsevier BV. 103, pp. 272-280. ISSN 1742-7061.
• Sala R et al. 2019. Collaborative membrane activity and receptor-dependent tumor cell targeting for precise nanoparticle delivery in CXCR4 + colorectal cancer. Acta Biomaterialia. Elsevier BV. 99, pp. 426-432. ISSN 1742-7061.
• Bazaga A et al. 2019. A Convolutional Neural Network for the Automatic Diagnosis of Collagen VI-related Muscular Dystrophies App. Soft. Comput. Elsevier BV. p. 105772. ISSN 1568-4946.
• Carrera-García L et al. 2019. CHRNG-related nonlethal multiple pterygium syndrome: Muscle imaging pattern and clinical, histopathological, and molecular genetic findings. American Journal of Medical Genetics Part A. WILEY-LISS. 179-6, pp. 915-926. ISSN 1552-4825.
• Pascual-Pastó G et al. 2019. Therapeutic targeting of the RB1 pathway in retinoblastoma with the oncolytic adenovirus VCN-01. Science Translational Medicine. American Association for the Advancement of Science. 11-476, pp. 9321. ISSN 1946-6234.

More publications on ResearchGate

Teaching

• Coordinator, Master in Clinical Genetics and Minority Diseases, SJD Barcelona Children's Hospital, Universitat de Barcelona, 2020-2022.
• Lecturer, Optics and Optometry, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, 2019-present.
• Manager and teacher, "Spectral Confocal Microscopy and Super Resolution", Paediatrics training, SJD Barcelona Children's Hospital, Universitat de Barcelona (accredited course), 2018-present.
• Teacher, "Introductory course on Image J for fluorescence imaging analysis", Centre de Recerca en Agrigenòmica (CRAG), CSIC-IRTA-UAB, an agricultural genomics research centre, 2014-present.
• Teacher, "Advanced Techniques in Fluorescence and Confocal Microscopy" graduate course, Institut Català de Paleontologia, Centre Esfera of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and Transmitting Science, 2017-present.