Belen Ramos Josemaria

She coordinates Molecular Psychiatry team where she studies altered molecular mechanisms in the brain (neurons and astrocytes) and in blood in schizophrenia that can lead to alterations in the development or functioning of synaptic transmission, with special interest in transcription factors and inflammatory processes.

Members of the research team:

• Francisco Vidal Domènech (Graduate Student)
• Gemma Riquelme Alacid (Research Assistant-Project Manager)
• América Vera Montecinos (Postdoctoral Researcher)
• Alfonso Monje Hernandez (Research Collaborator)
• Joan Costa Escola (Research Collaborator)
• Marta de León Egozcue – Ayudante de investigación

Belén Ramos holds a degree in Health Sciences (Veterinary Medicine), a DEA in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and Genetics, and a PhD in Physiology from the Universidad de Extremadura. She completed research stays at different institutions, Saint Jude Children's Research Hospital (Dept. of Biochemistry) (USA) and Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (Dept. de Bioquímica i Biologia Molecular). Her postdoctoral training took place at Harvard Medical School (USA), in the Department of Pathology, from 2003 to 2007 under the Fulbright/MCyT program, and for several months also at Tufts School of Medicine (USA) in the Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology.

In 2007, she created the Molecular Psychiatry Research Laboratory at the current Institut de Recerca Sant Joan de Déu with the support of the Marie Curie International Reintegration Grants program and has coordinated this group from that moment to the present. She has been a Miguel Servet I and Miguel Servet II researcher. She is part of the research group recognized by AGAUR MERITT, where she coordinates the Molecular Psychiatry line. She has been part of group G11 of CIBERSAM since 2008. She was an associate professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the Faculty of Medicine of Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona from 2016 to 2023.

She has been the Scientific Director of the Biobanc-Banc de Teixits Neurològics del Parc Sanitari Sant Joan de Déu since 2016. She has been affiliated with the Faculty of Medicine of UC-UVIC since 2018, where she is currently a Full Professor.

Her scientific career has focused on understanding the development, functioning, and alterations of the nervous system. In recent decades, she has mainly focused on identifying altered molecular pathways in the brain in psychotic disorders related to developmental, inflammatory, and immune response processes, with a special interest in transcriptional regulatory factors. In addition, she investigates these regulators and inflammatory pathways, as well as blood-brain barrier disruption, as potential peripheral biomarkers associated with cognitive functioning and symptom severity in psychosis, and more recently also in post-COVID-19 patients.