Miguel Chillón Rodríguez

Miguel Chillón Rodríguez

Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

Life & Medical Sciences

Born in Barcelona in 1966. PhD in Genetics at Hospital Duran i Reynals, Universitat de Barcelona (1994). Award in Human Genetics by the Spanish Association of Human Genetics (1995). HHMI postdoctoral fellow on Gene Therapy for Cystic Fibrosis, at the Internal Medicine Dept, University of Iowa, USA (1994-97). EMBO fellow in Genethon III (Evry, France) (1997-99) on viral vectors for Gene Therapy. Postdoctoral fellow on Gene Therapy (2000-2001) at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB). ICREA Research Professor at the UAB since 2001. Director of the Vector Production Unit, since 2004, and Assistant Professor of the UAB since 2005. He has published more than 85 papers, generated 14 patents, and co-founded 2 spin-offs in biotechnology: NanoTherapix (2009) and Kogenix Therapeutics (2016). Dr Chillon is currently the coordinator of the Advance Therapy Program of VHIR.

Research interests

Medicine still has many challenges to solve especially on complex diseases where a large number of both, genetic and environmental factors, are involved. Among them, aging-associated diseases and rare disorders have attracted attention because there are no effective curative treatments for them. Some of these diseases affecting the nervous system, which in addition is difficult to access and to manipulate with classical pharmacological treatments. To address these problems we have focused our research interests on three main objectives: (1) gene therapy strategies for diseases affecting the nervous system, such as rare neuromuscular and neurodegenerative disorders; (2) gene therapy strategies using chronokines for age associated diseases such as cognitive decline and dementia; and (3) development of more efficient and less immunogenic viral vectors.

Selected publications

– Fitzgerald MQ, Chu T, Puppo F, Blanch R, Chillón M, Subramaniam S & Muotri A 2024 “Protocol for Generation of Semi-guided Cortical Organoids with Complex Neural Oscillations“, Nature Protocols. Sep;19, 2712-2738.
– Bunuales M, Garduno A, Chillon M, Bosch A, Gonzalez-Aparicio M, Espelosin M, Garcia-Gomara M, Rico A.J, Garcia-Osta A, Cuadrado-Tejedor M, Lanciego J.L & Hernandez-Alcoceba R 2024 “Characterization of brain transduction capability of a BBB-penetrant AAV vector in mice, rats and macaques reveals differences in expression profiles“, Gene Therapy, 31, 455-466.
– Favaro M, Alamo P, Roher N, Chillon M, Lascorz J, Márquez M, Corchero JL, Mendoza R, Martínez Torró C, Ferrer Miralles N, Ferreira L, Mangues R, Vázquez E, Parladé E & Villaverde A, 2024 “Zinc-Assisted Microscale Granules Made of the SARS-CoV-2 Spike Protein Trigger Neutralizing, Antivirus Antibody Responses“, ACS Materials Letters‘, vol 6, pp 954-962