Director - Early Drug Development
Vall d’Hebron Institute of Oncology, Spain
Elena Garralda MD MSc, is a researcher and clinical investigator currently the Director of the Early Drug Development Unit at VHIO and the Director of the Phase I Unit at NEXT Oncology, both in Barcelona. Received the Medical Doctor degree from the Autonoma University, Madrid in 2005, and then specialized in Medical Oncology at the 12th of October’s University Hospital, Madrid, obtaining her license in May 2011. Same time accomplished the Advanced Studies Diploma (D.E.A.) at the Complutense University, Madrid as part of her PhD degree, a 2-year Master’s degree in Molecular Oncology at the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO) and a Master’s degree in Management Skills for Scientists and Researchers at IE Business School; both with the highest recommendation.
Early drug development has always been a major interest, especially translational oncology, targeted therapies, and personalized cancer medicine, being very involved with the Gastrointestinal Cancer Clinical Research Unit at the CNIO and with the South Texas Accelerated Research Therapeutics (START) Centers, what finally guided her first to the Early Drug Development Unit at VHIO, Barcelona, where she is the Principal Investigator and the Director since 2017, and then in 2021 as Director of the american’s NEXT Oncology Therapeutics subsidiary in Barcelona. Both Unit’s are mainly focused on proof-of-concept and proof-of-mechanism trials with targeted therapies with special emphasis on those in cell signaling, cancer stem cells, and immuno-oncology as well as epigenetics, first-in-human studies of targeted therapies, rational combinations of targeted therapies, biomarker-driven trials, and trials in molecularly selected populations. Linking clinical research with the different areas of investigation such as the molecular analysis of patients’ tumors and molecular prescreening or developing novel diagnostic tests (e.g. circulating DNA; Nanostring) with marketable pathways are the up-to-date and future goals.