Silvia Muro

Institut de Bioenginyeria de Catalunya

Life & Medical Sciences

Dr. Muro obtained her PhD in Sciences from Universidad Autónoma de Madrid and then moved to University of Pennsylvania as a Postdoctoral Associate and Research Assistant Professor in Pharmacology. In 2008 she joined the Bioengineering Department and the Institute for Bioscience and Biotechnology Research at the University of Maryland, where she was a tenured Associate Professor since 2012. Since November 2017, she is an ICREA Professor in the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia. Dr. Muro has published 80+ articles and chapters in drug delivery and has received awards from the Controlled Release Society, the American Society for Nanomedicine, the UMD Outstanding Life Sciences Invention in 2011, the Junior Faculty Outstanding Engineering Research award, and is a member of the NIH Nanomedicine Study Section. 


Research interests

Dr. Muro's research sits at the interface between molecular-cellular biology and nanotechnology-drug delivery. Her lab studies the biological mechanisms ruling how our cells and tissues transport cargoes to precise destinations within our bodies, and then applies this knowledge toward the design of “biologically-controlled” nanodevices for improved delivery of therapeutic agents to specific disease sites. Focusing on genetic conditions that cause metabolic, neurodegenerative and cardiovascular syndromes, as well as on a new transport pathway she helped discover, her goal is to gain non-invasive, efficient, and specific access within the body and its cells, to enable effective treatment of these life-threatening disorders and other maladies characterized by similar pathological traits. 

Selected publications

- Muro S 2018, 'Alterations in Cellular Processes Involving Vesicular Trafficking and Implications in Drug Delivery', Biomimetics, 3, 3, 19.

Selected research activities

Talks:

Parameters ruling receptor-mediated transport of nanotherapeutics. (Feb 2018) U.S. National Institutes of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD, USA.

Receptor-targeted drug delivery: biological mechanistic and translational applications (Jun. 2018) Summer seminar series of the Johns Hopkins Institute for Nanobiotechnology (INBT), Baltimore, MD, USA.

Optimizing transport of nanomedicines across the blood-brain barrier (Jul. 2018) 2nd meeting on Innovations and State of the Art in Dementia Research (ISADR), Valencia, Spain. Keynote speaker

Drug carrier transport accross the blood-brain barrier. (Oct. 2018) Symposium of the Italian Chapter of the Controlled Release Society, Padua, Italy.

Nanoscale therapeutics and novel targets for drug delivery (Nov. 2018) Genetic, Rare and Immune Disorders Symposium (GRIDS), Fairfax, VA, USA.

Grants:

-EXPLORA-MINECO BBB2GATE (PI) 09/18 - 08/20. Controlling the differential transport of therapeutic cargoes into versus across the BBB. 

-UM Ventures Seed Grant (PI) 06//18 - 05/19. Peptides for transport of therapeutics and their carriers in mouse models and humans.

Panels:

-USA NIH Nanomedicine; -France ANR, -Netherlands NWO; -ERC starting grant

Patents:

Muro S, Chen J, Solomon M, Gray K. ICAM-1 targeted fusion enzymes. US provisional.