Nicolás Cuenca, PhD, is an assistant professor in the Departments of Physiology, Genetics and Microbiology at the University of Alicante (Spain). He received a BS in biology from the University of Valencia and his PhD in medicine and surgery in 1988. After graduation, he left for a postdoctoral fellowship in Dr. Helga Kolb’s lab at the University of Utah, where he studied the morphology of retinal cells and synaptic connectivity including the dopaminergic circuitries in the mammalian retina.

Dr. Cuenca has extensive expertise in this field and his current interest is focused on the understanding of the neurodegenerative disease mechanisms and therapeutic treatments for retinal degenerative diseases. He is also studying the retinal changes in experimental models of Parkinson’s disease and described the impairment of the retinal dopaminergic circuitries, cell death and differential protein expression in MPTP-treated models and models treated with rotenone. His team has been working on the localization and expression of parkin, alpha-synuclein, UCH-L1 and Dj-1 in the mammalian retinas.

Dr. Cuenca is on the editorial board of several journals. He has been recognized with several national and international awards for his research and scientific photographs.