Dr Ana Maria Ortega-Prieto is a Research Associate in the Department of Infectious Diseases, School of Immunology & Microbial Sciences.

After obtaining a degree in Biology from the Universidad de Málaga (2008) and an MSc in Molecular and Cellular Biology from the Universidad Autonoma de Madrid (2010), Dr Ortega-Prieto joined the CBMSO-CSIC in Madrid, Spain, to carry out a PhD thesis, where her research was aimed at the characterisation of antiviral agents that act through lethal mutagenesis against HCV.

In 2015, she joined Marcus Dorner's lab at Imperial College London as a Postdoctoral Fellow to work on an ERC starting grant aimed at developing more complex and physiological in vitro and in vivo model systems to study hepatotropic infections. She established liver-on-a chip cultures, spheroids, and self-assembling primary human hepatocyte co-cultures as well as several mouse models, including human liver chimeric mice and human immune system mice, to evaluate immunological responses and treatment strategies against several human pathogens, including HCV, HBV, HIV, ZIKV, and malaria. To further complement her knowledge about human pathogens, Dr Ortega-Prieto joined Professor Michael Malim’s lab at King’s in September 2020 to study HIV, Influenza virus, and SARS-CoV-2 host interactions.