Congratulations Dr. Inés García Rodríguez

On Monday, the 9th of September 2024, our PhD student Inés García Rodríguez defended her thesis “Understanding genotype dependent infection of Parechovirus A using human-based models”.

Within OrganoVIR Labs, Inés worked on the characterization of Parechovirus (PeV-A) infection using human-based model of the airway and intestinal epithelium and cerebral organoids. She was also an Early Stage Researcher (ESR) in the OrganoVIR consortium, a H2020 project funded by the European Commission. As an ESR, she did a secondment at Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland.

As an OrganoVIR ESR, Inés used human airway epithelium (HAE) and human intestinal epithelium (HIE) models to study viral entry and infection of PeV-A and to establish a relation between infectivity and host factors such as developmental state of the tissue, donor age of primary cells, immune response or expression of known receptors.

Prof. Dr. Dasja Pajkrt is her promotor along with Dr. Katja Wolthers and Dr. Adithya Sridhar as her co-promotors.