Investigación - Nuestro equipo

Julio Alonso Padilla graduated in Biology in the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, and obtained a PhD in Molecular Biology in the same university in 2010.

He is responsible for the laboratory of Trypanosoma cruzibiology at ISGlobal. This protozoan parasite causes Chagas disease, a neglected zoonosis that affects millions of people worldwide, the majority of them in Latin America. He is as well the Director of the Chagas Initiative, leading a multidisciplinary team pursuing the direct translation of research advances to society.

The main research lines of the Chagas group include the identification of new therapeutic interventions against T. cruzi infection, and the implementation of more practical diagnostics.

Líneas de investigación

• New therapeutic interventions for Chagas disease.
• Implementation of more practical diagnostic algorithms.
• Identification and validation of treatment efficacy and disease progression biomarkers.

Principales publicaciones

• Evaluation and validation of a PrintrLab-based LAMP assay to identify Trypanosoma cruzi in newborns in Bolivia: a proof-of-concept study. Rojas Panozo L, Rivera Nina S, Wehrendt DP, Casellas A, Pinto L, Mendez S, Kuo CW, Lozano DF, Ortiz L, Pinazo MJ, Picado A, Sanz S, Abril M, Gascon J, Wong S, Schijman AG, Torrico F, Alonso-Padilla J. Lancet Microbe. 2024 Sep;5(9):100887. doi: 10.1016/S2666-5247(24)00110-1.
• Transcriptomic evidence of immune modulation in subjects with chronic Trypanosoma cruzi infection. Ros-Lucas A, Gabaldón-Figueira JC, Martinez-Peinado N, Losada-Galvan I, Posada E, Escabia E, Martín-Mur B, Gut M, Esteve-Codina A, Gascón J, Pinazo MJ, Alonso-Padilla J. J Infect Dis. 2024 Aug 28:jiae429. doi: 10.1093/infdis/jiae429.
• A guide for the generation of repositories of clinical samples for research on Chagas disease. Martínez-Peinado N, Gabaldón-Figueira JC, Rodrigues Ferreira R, Carmen Thomas M, López MC, Cremonini Araújo-Jorge T, Alarcón de Noya B, Berón S, Ramsey J, Losada Galván I, Schijman AG, González Martínez A, Mariano Ruiz A, Rojas G, Magalhães Saraiva R, Noya-González O, Gómez A, Maldonado RA, Pinto J, Torrico F, Scandale I, Agüero F, Pinazo MJ, Gascón J, Hasslocher-Moreno AM, Alonso-Padilla J; NHEPACHA Network (New Tools for the Diagnosis and Evaluation of Chagas Disease). PLoS Negl Trop Dis. 2024 Aug 15;18(8):e0012166. doi: 10.1371/journal.pntd.0012166.
• Practical diagnostic algorithms for Chagas disease: a focus on low resource settings. Gabaldón-Figueira JC, Skjefte M, Longhi S, Escabia E, García LJ, Ros-Lucas A, Martínez-Peinado N, Muñoz-Calderón A, Gascón J, Schijman AG, Alonso-Padilla J. Expert Rev Anti Infect Ther. 2023 Jul-Dec;21(12):1287-1299. doi: 10.1080/14787210.2023.2279110.
• The use of AlphaFold for in silico exploration of drug targets in the parasite Trypanosoma cruzi. Ros-Lucas A, Martinez-Peinado N, Bastida J, Gascón J, Alonso-Padilla J. Front Cell Infect Microbiol. 2022 Jul 14;12:944748. doi: 10.3389/fcimb.2022.944748.