Dr Gabriela Guedes
Dr Gabriela Guedes is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Pharmacology at the University of Cambridge, working at the interface of protein engineering, nanotechnology, and biomedicine. Her research focuses on the development of protein-based nanomaterials for healthcare applications.
In her current research, she investigates the formation of biomolecular condensates in molecular pathways that are frequently disrupted in cancer. Her aim is to understand how these condensates contribute to disease onset and progression, and ultimately to develop protein-nanoparticle systems capable of targeting and modulating them.
Dr Guedes has a highly multidisciplinary background, combining a bachelor’s degree in Biochemistry, a master’s in Biomedical Materials and Devices, and a PhD in Molecular Biology and Biomedicine.
Her interest in nanomaterials and nanomedicine began during her undergraduate project, where she developed cellulose nanocrystals as a theranostic platform. Then, simultaneously with her master’s studies, she worked as a research fellow on anisotropic self-assembled polyoxometalates (POMs) at CICECO, University of Aveiro, Portugal. Fascinated by the versatility and molecular tunability of POMs, she further explored their potential as photothermal agents in her master’s thesis at Prof. Hélder A. Santos laboratory at the University of Helsinki, Finland (Erasmus+ programme). This work culminated in the development of a hybrid injectable hydrogel for synergistic photothermal and chemotherapy.
Dr Guedes completed her PhD in 2024 at CIC biomaGUNE (Spain), under the supervision of Prof. Aitziber L. Cortajarena, where she developed engineered protein–nanoparticle hybrids as theranostic agents for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Her thesis demonstrated that proteins can serve as versatile and tunable scaffolds to stabilize metal nanoclusters, achieving high relaxivity and biocompatibility while integrating therapeutic and diagnostic functions into a single platform.
Select publications
- Maestro D., Palanca A., Soto H., Llarena I., DeGrave A.N., Guedes G., Oliveira G.H., Conceição A.L.C., Mieites V., Icardo J.M., Sanchez-Cano C., Conde O.M., Lutz S., Cortajarena A.L., Villar A.V., Cardiac fibrosis inhibitor CTPR390 prevents structural and morphological changes in human engineered cardiac connective tissue, iScience, 2025, 28, 8113013. DOI: http://doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2025.113013.
- Skiba M., Klemeyer L., Guedes G., Sun X., Haas S., Cortajarena A.L., Koziej D., Parak W.J., Sanchez-Cano C., Probing the Biological Identity of Inorganic Nanoparticles with Anomalous Small Angle X-Ray Scattering, Small, 2025, 2504135. DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/smll.202504135.
- Guedes G., Uribe K.B., Martínez-Parra L., Aires A., Beraza M., Ruiz-Cabello J., Cortajarena A.L., Engineering Protein-Nanoparticle Hybrids as Positive Contrast Agents, ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces, 2024; 16, 44, 59849–59861. DOI: http://doi.org/10.1021/acsami.4c12799.
- RuizdelRio J., Guedes G., Novillo D., Lecue E., Palanca A., Cortajarena A.L., Villar A.V., Fibroblast-derived extracellular vesicles as trackable efficient transporters of an experimental nanodrug with fibrotic heart and lung targeting, Theranostics, 2024, 14(1), 176–202. DOI: http://doi.org/10.7150/thno.85409.
- Skiba M., Guedes G., Karpov D., Feliu N., Cortajarena A.L., Parak W.J., Sanchez-Cano C., Probing the Cellular Fate of the Protein Corona around Nanoparticles with Nanofocused X-ray Fluorescence Imaging, International Journal of Molecular Sciences, 2024, 25(1), 528. DOI: http://doi.org/10.3390/ijms25010528.
- Aires A., Fernández-Afonso Y., Guedes G., Guisasola E., Gutiérrez L., Cortajarena A.L., Engineered Protein-Driven Synthesis of Tunable Iron Oxide Nanoparticles as T1 and T2 Magnetic Resonance Imaging Contrast Agents, Chemistry of Materials, 2022, 34, 24, 10832–10841. DOI: http://doi.org/10.1021/acs.chemmater.2c01746.
- Guedes G., Wang S., Fontana F., Figueiredo P., Lindén J., Correia A., Pinto R.J.B., Hietala S., Sousa F.L., Santos H.A., Dual‐Crosslinked Dynamic Hydrogel Incorporating {Mo154} with pH and NIR Responsiveness for Chemo‐Photothermal Therapy, Advanced Materials, 2021, 33, 40, 2007761. DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/adma.202007761.
- Guedes G., Wang S., Santos H. A., Sousa F. L., Polyoxometalate composites in cancer therapy and diagnostics, European Journal of Inorganic Chemistry, 2020, 22, 2121–2132. DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/ejic.202000066.
Select awards
- Extraordinary Doctoral Awards 2023/2024 in Biomedicine by the University of the Basque Country
- Best Poster Prize at ChemBio VII, Sevilla, Spain by the BioFactors Journal
- Best oral presentation at ESB2023, Davos, Switzerland. Awarded by Journal of Materials Science: Materials in Medicine, 2023
- Top 10% Most downloaded articles in Advanced Materials during its first 12 months of publication