María Jesus Vicent Docón – Head of the Polymer Therapeutics Lab

Prof. María J. Vicent (Villareal, 24/12/73) received her Ph.D. in Chemistry in 2001 from La Universitat Jaume I (Spain), with research stays in Prof. Fréchet’s lab at the University of California, Berkeley (USA). She transitioned to biomedical research at Inst. Biomar S.A. (Pharmamar, Spain) and later at Cardiff University (UK) with Prof. Duncan, as a Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellow. In 2004, she joined the CIPF (Valencia, Spain) through a Marie Curie Reintegration contract and has led the Polymer Therapeutics Lab since 2006. She is the scientific lead of the CIPF Screening Platform (EU-OpenScreen Specialist Site) and has coordinated the Cancer Program at the CIPF since 2024. She also serves as Scientific Director for requested institutional tasks. She is a manager at the Spanish Research Agency (AEI) in the Materials for Biomedicine Sub-area, sits on International Advisory Boards (e.g., CURAM in Ireland and FormulaEx in Sweden), and on the Executive Board of the Controlled Release Society, where she was a past president (presidency ended in July 2026). She has been Editor-in-Chief of the prestigious journal Advanced Drug Delivery Reviews.

Her research (which also takes place as part of the CIBERONC excellence network) has secured funding of over €22 million, including an ERC Advanced Grant (Morpheus), an ERC Consolidator Grant (MyNano), two ERC Proof of Concept grants (Polymmune and Polybraint), and multiple international projects (including NanoPanTher and PINT). She has supervised 23 PhD students (4 of whom received Extraordinary Prizes), with 14 ongoing. Prof. Vicent has received numerous awards: the 2025 Jaume I Award in New Technologies, the 2024 Samyang Award (CRS, USA), the Women in Science (CRS, 2023), the “Concepción Aleixandre” Women in Science (2021), and the 6th and 9th Idea awards. She has been elected as a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors (USA, 2024), the CRS (2021), and the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (USA, 2019), where she co-chairs the international committee. She has 165 peer-reviewed publications (H-index 56, 11,000 citations, i10: 137) and holds 15 patents (6 licensed). In 2012, she co-founded Polypeptide Therapeutic Solutions S.L. (now Curapath S.L.), an internationally known contract development and manufacturing organization with over 100 employees in Valencia (Spain) and Boston (USA).

Researcher unique identifier(s) (ORCID): 0000-0001-7771-3373

More information at http://www.cipf.es/en/polimeros-terapeuticos

See here for a summarized CV [Summarized CV]

Google Scholar – https://scholar.google.es/citations?user=Ly466TEAAAAJ&hl=es

PubMed Bibliography – https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/myncbi/1ZmSDV_PEn5wFk/bibliography/public/