Biography

I completed my undergraduate and Master’s studies in Pharmaceutical Sciences in Brazil, which gave me insight into drug mechanisms and sparked my interest in how these, and potential new drugs, impact immune function. Subsequently, I pursued a PhD in Infection and Immunity at the University of Glasgow, during which I described a novel molecule regulating dendritic cell-T cell interactions, with implications for T cell differentiation and potential as a target for future drug development.

As a postdoc at the University of São Paulo, I expanded my focus to the interplay between innate and adaptive immunity, investigating how targeting neutrophil extracellular traps (NETs) could influence SARS-CoV-2-specific T cell responses.

In addition to my immunology research, I have developed an interest in bioinformatics. I developed a freeware tool for computational flow cytometry (FCM), which not only enhances accessibility to FCM data analysis but also serves as an environment for the creation of R-based FCM algorithms, furthering the integration of computational techniques into immunological research.

I am a member of the Transplantation Research Immunology Group (TRIG), and my research focuses on developing novel T cell-based therapies for IgA Nephropathy (IgAN), a leading cause of kidney failure marked by the deposition of IgA-rich immune complexes in the renal glomeruli. Despite its prevalence, there are no effective treatments for IgAN. My work is part of the geneTIGA project, an initiative aimed at developing gene-edited T cell therapies to treat IgAN. Specifically, I am working with existing IgAN models to evaluate redirected T cells that target IgA1-producing cells, with the goal of reducing the deposition of IgA immune complexes and improving renal function.

In addition to testing the therapeutic efficacy of these T cells, I am studying the molecular mechanisms involved, using spatial analysis to integrate spatial context into single-cell gene and protein expression data. This approach allows us to explore how the therapies impact immune responses within specific tissue microenvironments, enhancing our understanding of their potential effectiveness in treating IgAN.