Michael Edel PhD

Dr. Michael Edel is a Lecturer and ANECA accredited Professor (Titular) at the University of Autonoma Barcelona (UAB), Faculty of Medicine, Department of Anatomy and Embryology, and adjunct Associate Professor at the University of Western Australia (UWA). He completed his Science degree in Anatomy and Human Biology and Physiology with an honors degree describing the pathology associated with human spine degeneration at the University of Western Australia and his Ph.D. thesis focused on mechanisms of angiogènesis during neoplastic growth in the field of Pathology at UWA.

His high level of scholarship has been recognized as Visiting Scholar at Oxford University, Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics (Merton College, 2018-2019) and with awards including the French/Australia Government fellowship to study at the Institute Curie, Paris (1998), Anges Watt Ph.D. student Scholarship (1996), the John Nott traveling Fellowship at Harvard Medical School Boston (2000) and the DURSI fellowship with Dr. Miguel Beato at the CRG, Barcelona (2004). He has specialized during his post-doctoral fellowships on basic cell biology and molecular genetic mechanisms of cancer, neural stem cell development, and angiogenesis, resulting in a number of high-impact publications (Cell 2005, Nature Biotechnology 2008, Genes and Development 2010 and Stem Cells and Development 2012&14 and Stem Cells 2019 and 2021).

In 2010 he was awarded a Ramon y Cajal tenure track position. In 2011 he was the Principal Investigator of a MINECO grant (BFU2011-26596) entitled: “Investigation into the role of the cell cycle and apoptosis in human clinical-grade induced pluripotent stem cells and adult stem cells for future application to treat spinal cord injury”. In 2014 he received continued funding from MINECO (BFU2014 54467-P) to derive a clinical-grade protocol to safely generate iPSC-neural cell types. At Oxford University, Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics he generated sympathetic neurons from human iPSC to model neural-cardiac muscle cell synapse in disease.

He has over fifteen years of experience leading a group of six staff/students on multiple projects to investigate new cell-based applications to study neural regeneration as well as eye and lung diseases. He collaborates with the Institute Barraquer to generate limbal eye stem cells to treat ocular surface damage. His work was supported by Caxia Impulse and has collaborations in the industry to search for new cell-based therapy applications, creating a spin-off company