Sara García Alonso
Sara García Alonso is a Spanish cancer researcher and reserve ESA astronaut. Since 2019, she has been a postdoctoral researcher at the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre. In 2022, she was chosen as a reserve astronaut in the European Astronaut Corps.
Education and academic career
García attended University of León, where she earned a bachelor's degree in biotechnology in 2012 and a master's degree in biomedical and biological research in 2013.As a doctoral candidate at University of Salamanca, García conducted research on cancer medicine as a university research assistant for the Spanish National Research Council. She earned a doctorate cum laude in the nuclear biology of cancer and translational medicine in the university's in 2018, advised by Atanasio Pandiella Alonso. Her doctoral dissertation focused on mechanisms of resistance to antibody-drug conjugates in ErbB receptors and it won her the university's Outstanding Doctorate Award the following year.
Since 2019, she has been working as a postdoctoral researcher on drug discovery and experimental oncology at the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre, where she has led a project to discover drugs for lung cancer and pancreatic cancer in the laboratory of Mariano Barbacid. Her research has focused on RAF1 selective degraders as a therapeutic target, in order to combat certain forms of cancers. She participated in a 6-month training programme at IE Business School, in Madrid, in 2021. She has volunteered for the, a nonprofit organisation.