The TerGenOMIC research group was approved as GIUV in 2021, although it is the formalisation of a pre-existing group with a track record of more than 20 years, and has been assigned to the Pharmacology Department of the Faculty of Medicine. The group coordinator was the full-time Pharmacology professor D. Salvador F. Aliño Pellicer, who currently is an UV emeritus professor.

Nowadays, PhD María José Herrero, Assistant Professor within the same department, is the head of the group. Since its beginnings, the group has participated in the development of non-viral genetic therapy. Numerous scientific contributions in specialised international journals have been made in that regard. These contributions reported the progress made in the translational research process of the genetic therapy from cell culture studies to its application in big ‘in vivo’ animals in scenarios as complex as a liver transplant and in ‘ex vivo’ human organs. Optimised strategies have been developed for the directed DNA entry (hAAT, hIL10 and other genes) to the liver of mice, rats, pigs and hepatic segments from patients, achieving an effective gene expression with a well tolerated strategy by the animals.

We are currently working on the delivery of genes, such as the IL10, in pig liver transplants, with the intention of modulating the immune rejection response, and in human intestine segments, which are affected by colitis or by the Crohn disease, in order to assess their potential efficacy in blocking the exacerbated inflammatory response (FIS project). Within the area of gene therapeutics, our laboratory has been developing the production of gene and cellular vaccines with anti-tumour capacity. In order to do, irradiated (to avoid their reproduction) tumour cells were modified to stimulate the immune response against them.

Simultaneously, since around 12 years ago, the group has been focusing their research efforts towards the field of pharmacogenomics too. This research field focuses on the study of genetic variants present within the pharmacogenes (those which encode the proteins responsible for the processes of absorption, transport, metabolism and excretion of medicine) to determine possible relations between these individual variants and the effect of specific drugs. These genetic variants, mainly SNPs (single nucleotide changes) aren’t intrinsically pathological, but they can affect the drugs efficacy and toxicity and produce severe disorders in the patients with one or more of these variants.

Our group works in this field with a global overview and, therefore, offers the possibility of doing a pharmacogenetic analysis for the clinical services of any specialisation, such as transplants, cancer, inflammatory diseases, dermatology, etc. We have developed various analysis panels based on Mass Array and PCR, with the utmost scientific evidence, that allow all genetic variants to be analysed. There are others as well which need more information, but that can end up being of interest due to the key genes they affect.

Our group has also published several specialised articles within that field and, nowadays, we are part of various national research projects with the objective of bringing the procedure to the clinical practice (IMPACT and BioFRAM).