Extracellular Mitochondria in Health and Disease

Dr. Carla Lopes graduated in Biomedical Engineering in 2010. Her Ph.D. was focused on modeling neurodegenerative diseases first by using transgenic mouse models and later patient-derived induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC) to understand metabolic and mitochondrial abnormalities. In 2015, she worked as a Post Doc supported by a grant from a project financed by The Luso-American Development Foundation Life Science 2020 at the Center for Neuroscience and Cell Biology. In this project, she worked mainly on metabolic and mitochondrial abnormalities in fibroblasts, iPSC and neural stem cells obtained from late-onset HD and genetically corrected counterparts. In 2018, Dr. Lopes received a grant funded by FCT as a Principal Investigator “iPS cells-derived exosomes - impact on mitochondrial (dys)function in Huntington’s disease and potential nanodelivery system for microRNA-based therapeutics”. In 2023 she was hired as an Assistant researcher at the Multidisciplinary Institute of Ageing, Coimbra.

Dr. Paulo Pinheiro graduated in Applied Biology in 2001. His PhD was focused on characterizing the function/pharmacology of presynaptic glutamate receptors and their contribution to brain disorders. In 2009 he moved to the Institute for Neuroscience and Pharmacology, Copenhagen, where he obtained, among others, a prestigious 2-year Marie Curie Intra-European Fellowship and a large grant from the pharma industry. Here, his work was devoted to studying vesicle biogenesis, the vesicle priming process and the molecular mechanisms of neurotransmitter release. In 2012 Paulo won a competitive 5-year FCT investigator position at the CNC, Portugal, which he effectively took in 2015. He is currently part of the large Synapse Biology group led by Ana Luísa Carvalho, with a fully equipped electrophysiology lab, Coimbra, and collaborates extensively in-house and with international colleagues in diverse research topics. In 2023 he was hired in a tenure track position as Assistant Professor at the Department of Life sciences, University of Coimbra.