I studied Biotechnology at the University of Oviedo. After this, I relocated to Madrid to study a master on Advanced Therapies and Innovation in Biotechnology, and as part of my final master’s project I moved to London, where I worked at the Barts Cancer Institute on oncolytic adenoviruses for the treatment of triple negative breast cancer. Currently, I am working at the Amsterdam UMC location AMC. My main project aims to study human parechovirus (PeV-A). PeVs are picornaviruses associated with a variety of clinical symptoms, ranging from mild respiratory and gastrointestinal disease to severe neurological syndrome. Specially PeV-A3 has been associated with viral meningitis and encephalitis in infants. For this project human airway epithelium (HAE) and human intestinal epithelium (HIE) models will be used to study viral entry and infection. These specific models are chosen because both sites are believed to be the primary replication sites for picornaviruses. Moreover, the role of previously described or new receptors for PeV-A3 entry will be analyzed to further characterize the infection of this particular genotype. Another goal is 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. Finally, using different viral strains, viral determinants associated with symptomatic disease will be analyzed.