**Lourdes M. Varela**

Dr. Lourdes M. Varela graduated in Pharmacy and Ph.D. in Molecular Biology and Biomedicine at the University of Seville (US, Spain). Her Ph.D. received the extraordinary award from the US (2014) and was conducted at the Instituto de la Grasa (CSIC, Seville), the Baylor College of Medicine (Houston, TX, USA), and the Leibniz Institute for Atherosclerosis Research (Munster, Germany). She ¨ did postdoc studies at INSERM in France (Paris), at the Instituto Catalan de Ciencias Cardiovasculares ´ in Spain (Barcelona) and at the Andalusian Center for Molecular Biology and Regenerative Medicine (CABIMER, Seville, Spain). Since 2019, she has worked at the Institute of Biomedicine of Seville (IBiS, Spain), and her research focuses primarily on the search for early-stage biomarkers for cardiovascular disease to define potential therapy targets.
