Seminari de l’IQAC a la Sala d'actes del CID

Seminari de l’IQAC

Dijous 27 d'abril a la Sala d'actes del CID a les 12:00, farà la presentació Dr. Xavier Rovira de la Universitat de Vic el seminari “Lighting up molecular switches to decipher the remarkable language of cells”.

“Lighting up molecular switches to decipher the remarkable language of cells”

Dr. Xavier Rovira

Coordinator of the Molecular Photopharmacology research line 

Tissue Repair and Regeneration Laboratory (TR2Lab) 

Faculty of Sciences and Technology (UST) 

University of Vic - Central University of Catalonia

Tel : +34 938 815 519 (ext: 3205)

Email : xavier.rovira@uvic.cat

Dr Xavier Rovira did his PhD in the Laboratory of Molecular Neuropharmacology and Bioinformatics at  Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (Bellaterra, Spain) under the supervision of Dr Jesús Giraldo. During the PhD he carried out two predoctoral research stays at the Physiology & Biophysics Department of the Weill Medical College, Cornell University (New York, USA) under the supervision of Prof Harel Weinstein, and at the Laboratoire de Chimie et Biochimie of the Université Paris Descartes (Paris, France) under the supervision of Dr Francine Acher. In 2011, Dr Rovira obtained a Long-Term Fellowship from the Federation of European Biochemical Societies (FEBS) and, in 2012, the Beatriu de Pinós fellowship comprised in the Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions to support his postdoctoral stay in the team lead by Dr Jean-Philippe Pin at the Institut de Génomique Fonctionnelle (Montpellier, France). Recently, he has obtained a grant for young scientists by the Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness to start his own research group at the University of Vic.

His primary research interest has been the activation mechanisms of GPCRs. In particular, his studies have helped to shed light on the activation dynamics of GPCRs, to understand the cooperativity between the different binding sites of the receptor and to develop molecules with innovative and improved properties. Importantly, during these years he has been able to establish a multidisciplinary international network of collaborators, which has played an essential role in the development of the emerging field of Photopharmacology. Indeed, under the framework of a project collaboration, they have been able to design for the first time diffusible photoswitchable, very high affinity, allosteric modulators targeting GPCRs with in vivo activity on animal models of neuropathic pain.