IASP is pleased to announce Paulina Ramirez Garcia as the recipient of the 2021 John J. Bonica Trainee Fellowship. The Fellowship was established in 1998 in memory of the founder of IASP to support training in all aspects of pain research.
Paulina is a Biochemist by training from the Pontifical Catholic University of Valparaiso, Chile. She completed her PhD at Monash University under the supervision of Professor Tom Davis, Dr John Quinn, and Dr Nicholas Veldhuis. During her thesis, she used pH-responsive nanoparticles to target the nociceptive endosomal signal of the neurokinin 1 receptor. This study highlighted the potential of nanoparticles for the treatment of pain and was published in Nature Nanotechnology.
Paulina continued as a postdoctoral research fellow at The ARC Centre of Excellence in Bio-Nano Science and Technology (CBNS, Monash University). She optimized drug delivery systems to target G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) that signal from endosomes and investigated the compartmentalized signaling of nociceptive GPCRs. This work was part of an industry collaboration with Endosome Therapeutics.
Paulina was awarded Fellowship to work under the mentorship of Dr Brian Schmidt and Dr Donna Albertson at New York University to study neurological mechanisms of cancer pain. This fellowship will broaden Paulina’s training in clinical and preclinical pain research. The Fellowships, Grants and Awards Working Group selected Paulina as the 2021 winner due to the strength of the study, which involves humans and other animals as well as a variety of techniques. The Working Group and IASP as a whole look forward to the results of the research taking place over the next two years and seeing the impact it has on the pain community.