Elisa Oltra

Dr. Oltra´s work in the US led to the identification of regulatory mechanisms of intercellular channels formed by connexin43 in the heart and myometrium, as well as the discovery of a protein (Ini1) belonging to the spliceosome and essential for eukaryotic cell viability. She has been academic director of the first European Master's Degree in Biobanks in collaboration with the Spanish Biobank Network of the Carlos III Health Institute, Madrid (Spain) and a member of the Valencian Institute of Pathology (IVP). Chair of the Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS) Biomarkers Group of the North American Institute of Health's data registry initiative in Bethesda, MD (USA); a member of the European ME/CFS Research Group (EMERG) and a collaborator of research groups from various research centers and universities in the USA and Europe, including the Institute of Neuroimmune Medicine in Florida (USA), Charité Hospital in Berlin (Germany), Geneuro (Switzerland), Quadram Institute in Norwich (United Kingdom), and the University of Oxford (United Kingdom). Dr. Oltra leads the “Gene Expression and Immunity” research group at the Catholic University of Valencia, with the main objective of identifying Molecular Biomarkers of Fibromyalgia and ME/CFS as a strategy to understand the underlying molecular mechanisms in these diseases to develop curative and prevention programs. To this end, her studies focus on the post-transcriptional and epigenetic regulatory mechanisms that affect the cells of the immune system in these patients. The recent pandemic has led her research group to incorporate the study of long COVID-19 cases, since about 50% of patients that do not fully recover from SARS-CoV-2 infection end-up developing Fibromyalgia and/or ME/CFS.