Affiliation: University of Pennsylvania, Perelman School of Medicine

Dr. Noguera-Ortega received her PhD in Microbiology from the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB), Spain, obtaining the Extraordinary Award of the Department of Genetics and Microbiology 2015. During her training in Dr. Julian’s Lab at the UAB, she demonstrated the efficacy of a non-pathogenic rapid grower (Mycolicibacterium brumae, basonym Mycobacterium brumae) as a safer alternative to Bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG), the current treatment for superficial bladder cancer. Moreover, she developed a new oil-based formulation for the local delivery of mycobacteria that improved their immunomodulatory potential. This new formulation was protected by a patent. As a post-doc in the same lab, she studied more in depth the immune response generated by mycobacteria grown in different ways in an orthotopic mouse model of bladder cancer.

Since 2017, Dr. Noguera-Ortega has been a post-doc at the University of Pennsylvania (USA). There, her research continues to focus on cancer immunotherapy in solid tumors. Her research interest is in how to modify the tumor microenvironment to make it less hostile for the immune system using immunotherapies including checkpoint inhibitors, adenosine inhibitors, BiTEs targeting the TGF-β axis, and CAR T cells.