Juan Pedro Bolaños Hernández (born April 18, 1964, Santa María de Guía de Gran Canaria, Las Palmas) is a biochemist and neuroscientist specializing in neuroenergetics and metabolism. He is a professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Salamanca. His investigation focuses on the understanding of molecular mechanisms that regulate the metabolism and redox homeostasis in the cells of the central nervous system. He has received several recognitions throughout his scientific career. Among them is the Premio Castilla y León de Investigación Científica y Técnica e Innovación (Award Castilla y León for Scientific and Technical Research and Innovation).
Professional career
He comes from a family of pharmacists. During his childhood, he helped his father with some tasks in his laboratory of clinical analyses in his local town. It was here where he began being interested in chemistry, applied to biology, and eventually to the pharmaceutical sciences.
He studied Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of Salamanca, where he graduated with honors in 1987. Later he obtained a doctorate at the same university under the tutelage of Dr. José Mª Medina Jiménez. During his PhD, he did a research internship in Oxford, England, where he worked in the Metabolic Research Laboratory under the supervision of Dereck Williamson. In 1992 he defended his PhD thesis on the metabolism of valproic acid in the central nervous system, graduating with honors that same year. After his PhD he worked as a postdoctoral fellow from 1993 to 1995 at the Institute of Neurology of the University College of London as a Marie Curie scholar.
In 1996 he became a professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Salamanca. A year later, in 1997 he established his own research group and started working on a project funded by the Ministry of Science and Technology. From 1997 to 2004 he acted as Academic Secretary in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. He completed the national professorship habilitation test in 2005, and in 2007 he was incorporated as a full professor at the University of Salamanca.
His research group is located at the Institute of Functional and Genomic Biology, a mixed center University of Salamanca, and the Spanish National Research Council. It is recognized as a Group of Excellence of Castilla y León. The group has research collaborations with research centers at national and international levels, among which the University Hospital of Salamanca, University College London, and the Institute of Health Saint Carlos III.
He has been an editor in multiple international scientific journals such as Science, PNAS, Nature Communications, Nature Reviews Neuroscience, and Cell Metabolism. In 2021, the journal Neurochemical Research dedicated a special issue with articles related to his research lines to honor his academic career. Furthermore, he is part of reviewing boards at international organizations such as the Human Frontier Program Organization, FWO, Wellcome Trust, Parkinson's UK, Michael J. Fox Foundation, among others.
He has participated in committees of organization and direction of different research conferences and scientific events. In 2017 together with Gilles Bonvento, they organized a symposium on redox and metabolic interactions between neurons and astrocytes. In 2022 together with Giovanni Mariscano and Anne-Karine Bouzier-Sore directed the course Bioenergetics for Brain Functions as part of the Cajal Advanced Neuroscience Training Programme. During that same year, he directed the summer school of the International Society of Neurochemistry and the Journal of Neurochemistry under the theme of Cerebral Metabolism in Health and Disease.