Dr. Antonio Pineda Lucena

Professional career

Graduated in Chemical Sciences at the Universities of Cordoba and Granada. D. Thesis at the Centro de Investigaciones Biológicas (CIB, Madrid, Spain) of the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Guillermo Giménez-Gallego in 1995.

After his Ph.D., he moved to The Netherlands (MEC, EMBO, and TMR -currently Marie Sklodowska-Curie postdoctoral fellowships) for a postdoctoral stay (1996-1999) in the laboratory of Prof. Dr. Cees Hilbers at the Radboud Universiteit in Nijmegen, where he worked on the development of new methodologies related to molecular biology, protein chemistry, and Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectroscopy.

Later, he obtained a contract fellowship from the biotechnology company Amgen and, subsequently, an Associate Scientist position (1999-2002) at the Ontario Cancer Institute (Princess Margaret Hospital, Toronto, Canada), the Canadian reference center for cancer research and treatment, where he worked on the structural characterization of oncoproteins and tumor suppressors, as well as on the development of new structural genomics technologies. 

Subsequently, he was appointed Associate Principal Scientist (2002-2005) at the pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca in Alderley Park (Manchester, UK), the largest research center of this company in oncology. During this period, he worked on the structural characterization of pharmaceutically relevant targets and drug design using NMR and computational chemistry techniques. In addition, he belonged to the group responsible for evaluating and selecting drug targets in cell invasion and metastasis within the pharmaceutical company. 

In 2005, he was recruited by the Centro de Investigación Príncipe Felipe (CIPF, Valencia, Spain) to direct, as Principal Investigator, the Structural Biochemistry laboratory and the NMR platform of the same center. During this period (2005-2015), he also held different research management responsibilities related to the Presidency of the Research Committee, the Direction of the Advanced Therapies Program, and the Deputy Direction of the CIPF. 

In 2015, he joined the Instituto de Investigación Sanitaria La Fe (IIS La Fe, Valencia, Spain) as Director of the Drug Discovery Unit and, at the same time, as Coordinator of the Joint Unit in Clinical Metabolomics CIPF/IIS La Fe. During this period, he also occupied the Direction of the Area of Research in Innovation in Diagnostics and Therapeutics and the Presidency of the Innovation Committee of IIS La Fe. 

In 2019, he accepted the Direction of the Molecular Therapies Program and that of the Laboratory of Medicinal Chemistry at Cima Universidad de Navarra (Pamplona, Spain). He has held the position of Director of Translational Research and Deputy Director of the same entity. Since September 2022, he has been Scientific Director of Cima.

He combines this activity with postgraduate teaching at the Universidad de Navarra and the Universitat Jaume I. Since 2020, he is also Coordinator of the Personalized Medicine Area within the 2025 Strategy of the Universidad de Navarra.