Affiliation: Roche Pharma Research and Early Development, Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences

Dr. Roberto Villaseñor is a laboratory head at Roche Pharma Research and Early Development. He is responsible for the Brain Barriers lab within the Pharmaceutical Sciences section. Dr. Villaseñor obtained his PhD in 2012 at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics under the guidance of Prof. Marino Zerial. During his PhD, he established quantitative microscopy-based assays to investigate how intracellular transport regulates signaling of receptor tyrosine kinases. Dr. Villaseñor then joined the Neuroscience department within Roche as a post-doctoral fellow to investigate the mechanisms of transport across the blood-brain barrier, where he pioneered the use of super-resolution microscopy to characterize intracellular transport of brain endothelial cells. He currently leads a team of scientists focusing on developing human in vitro models of the blood-brain barrier, to support the development of novel platforms for therapeutic drug delivery to the brain. His group combines CRISPR engineering and organoids to dissect the pathways of antibody intracellular sorting in brain endothelial cells.