Sara Marsal

Dr. Marsal graduated in Medicine and Surgery from the Navarra University in 1985, after which she completed her PhD at the Barcelona University in 1990. She was a Rheumatology Resident at the Vall d'Hebron Univesitary Hospital, Barcelona (1991-1994). In 2000, she started the Rheumatology Research Group in Vall Hebron University Hospital (HUVH), a translational research lab on immune-mediated inflammatory diseases (IMIDs). Since 2012, Sara Marsal has been an associate Professor of Rheumatology at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain. Professor Marsal is currently the head of the rheumatology department at the HUVH.

Professor Marsal has performed pioneering studies in genomics of IMIDs that have been published in top-tier journals in biomedical research. Using high throughput molecular analysis approaches she has identified new molecular profiles associated with diagnosis and treatment response in this group of diseases. Since 2006, she has been the director of the IMID Consortium, a network of 90 reference clinical researchers in rheumatology, dermatology and gastroenterology that is devoted to the discovery of new clinically useful biomarkers through multi-omic approaches. She also directs the IMID-Biobank, a large unique sample collection of >15,000 patients from the most prevalent IMID diseases. Professor Marsal serves on a variety of advisory panels from the pharmacological and biotechnological sector. She is also a co-founder and science advisor of IMIDomics, Inc. Recently she has been granted as a coordinator in a large H2020 European grant on combinatorial therapies in IMIDs using systems approaches.