Catarina Brito

Catarina Brito is the head of the Advanced Cell Models Laboratory, within the Animal Cell Technology Unit of iBET and ITQB-NOVA (Portugal), since 2014. Her research, with funding from FCT (Portugal), the European Commission and the Pharmaceutical Industry, is focused on development of advanced cell models to study deregulation of cellular microenvironment in disease progression and drug response, in particular mechanisms mediated by cell-cell interactions. Her main research focuses are Cancer and Central Nervous System diseases. She collaborates in projects on neural and hepatic toxicology and stem cell therapeutic approaches. Catarina holds a Biochemistry degree from the University of Lisbon and obtained her PhD in Biochemistry and Cell Biology with the New University of Lisbon. She pursued her PhD studies in the Laboratory of Glycobiology, at ITQB-NOVA (Oeiras, Portugal) and Institut Jacques Monod (Paris, France) in the areas of glycobiology and intracellular trafficking in human cells, elucidating the role of specific protein carbohydrate moieties in human neuronal differentiation and neuronal trafficking, and exploring glycosyltransferases for synthetic applications. She joined iBET (Portugal) in 2007, first as a postdoc working in human Stem Cell bioprocessing, and later as a Senior Project Manager of academic and industrial collaborations, developing preclinical cell models and bioassays. www.itqb.unl.pt/research/technology/advanced-cell-models http://tca.itqb.unl.pt www.ibet.pt