Elisa Lázaro Ibáñez

I am a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Discovery Sciences team, which develops new scientific methods for drug discovery. Discovery Sciences uses advanced screening methods of compounds to contribute to the early discovery of potential new drugs and supports other teams with delivering reagents, assays and disease models to discover new targets and medicines.

I completed my academic studies at the University of Helsinki, where I received my Ph.D. from the School of Pharmacy in 2017. As part of my education, I also spent one year as a visiting researcher at the University of Gothenburg.

During my academic career, I investigated the emerging field of extracellular vesicles, including `Exosomes´. Extracellular vesicles are nature’s small transport vesicles that interact with many different cell types in the body mediating physiological and pathological functions. I researched the potential use of extracellular vesicles for the diagnosis and treatment of cancer. I discovered, among other things, how vesicles act as reservoirs for biomarkers, which can aid early diagnosis of cancer and help to identify which patients respond best to specific treatments. In 2017, my work was awarded the `Most Outstanding Doctoral Thesis´ in Pharmaceutical Sciences in Finland.

I started at AstraZeneca as a Postdoctoral Researcher in March 2017. Today, I work primarily with developing techniques for loading extracellular vesicles with therapeutic molecules and targeting them to disease tissues.