Olga Genilloud

Olga Genilloud has more than 30 years of extended research experience in the discovery of novel microbial natural products, obtained in the academic and clinical environment and the pharmaceutical industry. She has a PhD in Chemistry from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (1988) from her work in the biosynthesis of secondary metabolites (Hospital Ramón y Cajal, Madrid 1984-1988; Harvard Medical School, Boston, 1987). In 1989 she joined the Natural Products Discovery Research Center at Merck Sharp and Dohme in Spain (1989-2008) where she led the bacterial natural products program and contributed to the discovery of key novel antibiotics such as platensimycin and kibdelomycin. In 2008 she assumed the leadership to establish Fundación MEDINA from the former MSD-Spain R&D Center. Currently she is Scientific Director at Fundación MEDINA and Head of the Microbiology department, and she manages the discovery programs and international collaborations with academic centers, large pharma and biotechnology companies in the identification of novel drug leads and high value biotechnological products. Her main research interests are focused on the production of novel microbial natural products, the exploration of novel microbial diversity to deliver novel chemistry, and the development of molecular and chemical tools to support natural products drug discovery and the identification of potential new therapeutics. She has more than 135 publications and book chapters, and 18 international patents.