Isaac Marin-Valencia, MD

Isaac Marin-Valencia is a tenure-track assistant professor and board-certified pediatric neurologist. Dr. Marin-Valencia grew up in the Canary Islands (Spain) with a younger brother, Abimael, who suffers from a neurodevelopmental condition that causes epilepsy and autistic features. When Dr. Marin-Valencia was six years old, he asked his mother why Abimael was different from other children. Her answer inspired him: “God sent us Abimael because he does not want man to forget his feelings.” At 10 years old, he began to believe that there must be a way to change the course of such a devastating disease and that science was the best tool to effect such a change.

After graduating from medical school at the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, he completed a residency in pediatrics at Sant Joan de Deu Hospital in Barcelona. It was there he first saw patients with neurodevelopmental disorders, mostly those associated with inborn errors of metabolism. He pursued further training in neurochemistry and pediatric neurology at UT Southwestern in Dallas, Texas. He applied super-resolution imaging technologies, such as 1H and 13C nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, to identify disease mechanisms in patients and animal models of neurometabolic diseases. He finished his training at The Rockefeller University, where he identified new metabolic genes associated with abnormal neural circuit formation in patients and disease models.

Dr. Marin-Valencia now leads The Abimael Laboratory of Neurometabolism. His ultimate goal is to beat disability in people with brain metabolic diseases and exemplify the Hippocratic motto he learned from his most admired professor, Dr. Jose Regidor: “Wherever the art of medicine is loved, there is also a love of humanity.”