Biosketch

Jose Miguel Arbones-Mainar graduated from the Pharmacy School in 1997 at the University of Navarra (Pamplona, Spain) He also obtained a BSc in Biochemistry at the University of Zaragoza (Zaragoza, Spain) in 2005. Under the supervision of Dr. Jesus Osada he got his PhD at the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University of Zaragoza (Spain) in 2005. During his PhD research, he performed studies assessing the effects of different dietary fatty acids (saturated fat, monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fatty acids) on atherosclerosis development in transgenic mouse models. Particularly, he  focused on the metabolic effects of the conjugated linoleic acid isomers cis9,trans11-CLA and trans10,cis12-CLA in Apoe-/- mice. These studies were performed in collaboration with the groups of Dr. Helen Roche (Trinity College Dublin, Ireland) and Dr.Baukje de Roos (Rowett Research Institute, Aberdeen, UK). In October 2005, he was invited by Dr.Baukje de Roos from the Rowett Research Institute,UK, to study changes in hepatic proteome following olive oil administration and its relationship with atherosclerosis development in Apoe-/- mice. From 2006 until 2010 he joined Dr Maeda and the Nobel laureate Dr. Smithies Laboratory at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (USA) as visiting research fellow. His stay was initially supported by a short grant provided by the Aragon Health Sciences Institute and then he extended his postdoctoral study as recipient of a Postdoctoral Fellowship from the Spanish Education and Science Ministry. He took an interest in the mutant mice that express three different human apolipoprotein E isoforms in their relation to obesity, type-2 diabetes and the Metabolic Syndrome. He found that mice expressing the human apoE4 isoform gain less weight compared to those with apoE3 when fed a western-type diet, but they are more susceptible to developing diet-induced insulin resistance. His work studying this and related phenomena spans until now. The work mentioned above led the applicant to compete and obtain a “Miguel Servet” fellowship (ranking 2nd out of 187 participants), in order to continue his research work in Europe in 2011.  Spanish Government-funded Miguel Servet program is a highly competitive six-year fellowship, for scientists working abroad, intended to help health-sciences researchers’ transition to an independent position in Spain.