Patricia Burgos

Biography

Dr. Burgos performed her primary and high school studies at Colegio Santa Cruz in Rio Bueno, Chile. Then, in 1990, she entered to the Universidad Austral de Chile to study Biochemistry. Her thesis work was carried out at the P. Universidad Católica de Chile in the lab of Alfonso González, where she studied the role of c-rel, from the NF-kappaB/Rel family in T cells from patients with systemic lupus erythematosus.

Then, in 1997, Dr Burgos performed her PhD work in the Laboratory of Alfonso González at the P. Universidad Católica de Chile. Her thesis work identified the autoantigen NSPA at the cell surface of neurons as a key determinant of neuropsychiatric manifestations of systemic lupus erythematosus patients. She graduated in 2003. In 2003, Dr Burgos moved to the Barbara Davis Center for Childhood Diabetes at the Colorado University in Denver, USA, and worked at the lab of Dr John Hutton for her post-doctoral training. She investigated trafficking pathways implicated in the delivery of insulin-secretory granules in pancreatic B-cells. She was awarded with a postdoctoral fellowship for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation International.

In 2005, Dr Burgos started her second post-doctoral training at the Cell Biology and Metabolism Program, NICHD, of National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA in the lab of Dr Juan Bonifacino. During her training she discovered key regulatory mechanisms implicated in the delivery of proteins to endolysosomal compartments such as Cathepsin D, BACE1 and Amyloid Precursor Protein. She was awarded with a postdoctoral fellowship John E. Fogarty International Center, NIH.

In 2010 she moved back to Valdivia, Chile, to start her independent career as Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Medicine of Universidad Austral de Chile stablishing her own lab in cell biology and biomedicine.

In 2017 she moved to Santiago, Chile, to establish a Center for Cell Biology and Biomedicine (CEBICEM) in the Faculty of Medicine and Science at the Universidad San Sebastián. During the same year, she helped to consolidate the PhD Program in Cell Biology and Biomedicine. Currently, Dr. Burgos is the Director of the PhD Program in Cell Biology and Biomedicine.

Her research has been funded by several extramural grants, including FONDECYT and collaborative grants. Dr. Burgos has tutored and co-tutored 15 undergraduate theses, 3 master degree theses, and 13 Ph.D. theses, 7 finished and 6 in progress. Her lab has received a total of four post-doc trainees, two of them currently working in the lab.