Dr Natividad Garrido Mesa
Lecturer in Pharmacology
University of East London, Health, Sport and Bioscience
Nati Garrido recently joined the School of Health, Sport and Bioscience as a Lecturer in Pharmacology. She teaches both undergraduate and postgraduate students, and has research interests in the fields of pharmacology and mucosal immunology.
-
AE5.29
University of East London
Stratford Campus
Water Lane
London, E15 4LZ
United Kingdom
E15 4LZ - n.garridomesa@uel.ac.uk +44208234590
Natividad Garrido Mesa graduated in Pharmacy from the University of Granada, Spain, in 2007. In 2008 she enrolled in a Masters in Pharmaceutical Care and she started working in the Department of Pharmacology, within the group “Pharmacology of Natural Products”, where she developed her PhD project as a recipient of a pre-doctoral fellowship from the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science (2008-2011). She obtained a PhD in Pharmaceutical Sciences in 2011, for which she was later awarded an Extraordinary Doctorate Award. As a PhD fellow she was a visiting scientist at the Department of
Gastroenterology & Hepatology at Leiden University Medical Center, (Holland, 2009), the Department of Immunology at Harvard University (USA, 2010), and the Department of Immunology at Trinity College Dublin (Ireland, 2012), for three short research internships. In 2012 she was awarded a Fellowship from the Ramon Areces Foundation (Spain) to conduct her postdoctoral studies at the Department of Experimental Immunobiology at King’s College London (UK), where she has been a Research Associate for the last four years (2012-2016). She has recently joined UEL as a Lecturer in Pharmacology.
Masters in Pharmaceutical Care (University of Granada, 2008)
BSc in Pharmacy (University of Granada, 2007)
Associate Fellow, Higher Education Academy, UK (2016)
Postgraduate Certificate in Academic Practice in Higher Education (University of Granada, 2012)
Postgraduate Certificate in Education C.A.P. (University of Granada, 2008)
Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act. UK Home Office Personal Licence holder (2012)
Postgraduate Certificate on Laboratory Animal Science for biomedical researchers. FELASA C (2011)
Co-editor of the Pharmacology series (Portaleditions, Spain)
Serving as reviewer for scientific journals
Member of the British Society of Immunology (2013-present)
Member of the Society of Spanish Researchers in the UK (2012-present)
Member of the Spanish Society for Pharmacology (2009-present)
Overview
Nati’s research work has been focused on the study of the regulation of mucosal immune responses in the context of intestinal inflammation and the validation of novel therapeutic strategies for the treatment of Inflammatory Bowel Diseases (IBD).
During her PhD, she evaluated the intestinal anti-inflammatory activity of immunomodulatory antibiotics in experimental models of IBD, with a strong focus on uncovering their effects on the altered immune response and the intestinal microbiota.
During the last for years she has dedicated her research to the understanding of the transcriptional control of Innate Lymphoid Cells (ILC) function and lineage commitment. In particular, she has been working towards unveiling the role of the transcription factor T-bet in regulating ILC plasticity and its implications in protective and pathogenic intestinal immune responses.
She has also participated as a co-investigator in a variety of research projects searching for pharmacological alternatives for the treatment of other inflammatory and autoimmune conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis, diabetes and metabolic syndrome, with a particular interest in natural compounds (probiotics, prebiotics and medicinal plants).
She has develop expertise in the preclinical evaluation drugs in models of immunologically driven disease both in vivo and in vitro. She has experience with induced and spontaneous animal models of disease, genetically modified mice, tissue specific conditional knock outs and fluorescent reporter mice. She also has experience studying the effects of different compounds in vitro (cell lines, co-cultures, T cell and innate lymphoid cell culture) and ex vivo (organ cultures or explants). She has acquired a background in cellular immunology that complements her previous pharmacological training and contributes to her understanding of the pharmacology of immune-based therapies. She has extensive expertise in isolating immune cells from different tissue compartments, histological processing and assessment of mouse tissue, analysis of the intestinal microbiota and different cellular and molecular techniques (multicolour flow cytometry and intracellular cytokine and transcription factor staining, ELISA, western blotting, microRNAs and mRNA RT-PCR and gene arrays).
Collaborators
- UEL
- External
-
Professor
Graham M Lord. King's College London
-
Professor
Julio J Galvez Peralta. University of Granada
-
<p class="title">Research Fellow</p>
Yanira Riffo Vasquez. King's College London
Research
Publications
Funding
Portfolio
- Biology of Disease (BS5001)
- Systems Pharmacology (BS6011)
- Clinical Microbiology and Immunology (BS6005)
- Infection and Immunity (BS5005)
- Immunology (BS5009)