Daniela Freitas

Daniela Freitas is currently a Researcher and Project leader at the Instituto de Investigação e Inovação (I3S), integrated in the University of Porto. Daniela has been recently awarded by the Portuguese Government fund "Stimulus of Scientific Employment, Individual Support 2020 (CEECIND)" to pursuit her research towards independence at i3S in Portugal (ranked the first place in the Basic and Clinic Medicine Panel) in cancer-adipose tissue crosstalk mediated by glycosylated extracellular vesicles (EVs). She is currently a PI of projects funded by FCT and Bial Foundation and leads a team investigating the role of extracellular vesicles glycosylation in cancer intercellular communication, metastasis and cachexia for biomarker discovery and novel cancer therapeutic strategies . She started her international PhD in 2015 at Dr. Reis lab at i3S (Porto, Portugal), which expertise allowed the development of unique glycoengineered cancer cell models, and in 2017 she joined the world-leading lab on cancer metastasis-mediated by exosomes, led by Dr. Lyden at the reputable Weill Cornell Medicine in New York (USA). During the course of her PhD work, she identified the role of specific cancer glycan (carbohydrate) in driving gastric cancer aggressiveness associated with patients poor survival (Freitas et al, Ebiomedicine, 2019, IF: 11.2) and proved for the first time their presence at gastric cancer EVs (Freitas et al, JEV, 2019, IF:21.02). Additionally, Daniela contributed to the pioneer discovery and systematic characterization of a novel cancer EV, the exomere, (Zhang et al, Nat Cell Biol, 2018, IF:17.7), participated in a study to investigate the function of EV proteins in mediating brain metastasis (Rodrigues et al, Nat Cell Biol, 2019, IF:20.0), and in a large cancer EV proteomic screening to uncover new cancer EV biomarkers (Hoshino et al, Cell, 2020, 41.6). She as a total of 13 publications, a cumulative impact factor of 139.1 and a total of 1033 citations and in her professional activities, she interacted with 215 collaborators in her scientific studies (Scopus). Daniela gave invited seminars and presented her work at several national/international meetings. She has received several awards (COST action and EMBO grants), and secured funding from several National and International agencies (APBRF - USA, FCT - PT, Bial Foundation - PT). She has experience in supervising Bachelor, Master and PhD students, participated in graduation Juries and in the organization of international meetings. She is also an invited peer-reviewer for several international Journals and she has participated in several outreach activities. Daniela has integrated the team of several projects funded by National (FCT, NORTE2020), European (FEDER, ERDF) and American (NHI, NCI) agencies.