Maria A. Blasco, CNIO scientific director. /Laura M. Lombardía. CNIO
Maria A. Blasco has been appointed Full Member No. 28, corresponding to Doctors of Pharmaceutical Sciences, and will have one year to present her admission speech.
Full numbered members are the most important members of the Royal National Academy of Pharmacy, reports this institution. There can be no more than 50, and each of them has a numbered medal. They are nominated by three Academics who also hold a medal and voted for at an extraordinary session of the Academy’s Plenary Assembly. They can be elected to any executive position within the Academy.
Alongside Maria A. Blasco, José Alfredo Martínez Hernández, Professor of Nutrition and Bromatology at the University of Navarra, has also been elected.
The Royal National Academy of Pharmacy was founded in 1737, the year in which a royal decree issued by King Philip V approved the charter of the Royal College of Apothecary Professors of Madrid. The Academy acquired its current name in 2003.
Biography of Maria A. Blasco
Maria A. Blasco has been the scientific director of CNIO (National Cancer Research Centre) since 2011. She is a molecular biologist and investigates the role of telomeres and telomerase in cancer and ageing. Her research has been published in the most prestigious scientific journals such as Cell, Nature and Science.
Her achievements have been recognised through international awards such as the Josef Steiner Cancer Research Award, from Switzerland; the Körber European Science Award, from Germany; and the Gold Medal of the European Molecular Biology Organisation (EMBO), as well as the Santiago Ramon y Cajal National Biology Award and the Rey Jaime I Award, among others.
Blasco has received four honorary doctorates in Spain, from the Carlos III University of Madrid (2014), the University of Alicante (2017), the University of Murcia (2018), and the International University of Valencia (2022). In October 2017, she received the Scientific Merit Award from Valencia’s Regional Government.
She has been the editor of several scientific journals, such as Cancer Research and the Journal of Cell Biology and is a member of various scientific advisory boards in Spain and abroad. In 2020, she was appointed a member of the Royal Board of Trustees of the Prado Museum (Madrid); in 2022, she became a member of the Board of Trustees and President of the Scientific Advisory Council of the ICAR Foundation (International Centre for Ageing Research) (Valencia – Spain), as well as a member of the Advisory Board of FECYT.