Sara Ricardo

Sara Ricardo completed the PhD degree in Moleculas pathology and genetics in 2011/09/08 by Universidade do Porto Instituto de Ciências Biomédicas Abel Salazar. She has a solid background in the pathology field, working in the diagnostic pathology lab of Ipatimup for the first 10 years of her career. During this time, she developed the Msc and PhD degree as a researcher in the Breast Pathology field. After completion the PhD degree, she started working as a post-doc researcher in the Differentiation and Cancer group at i3s/ipatimup and shifted from breast to ovary cancer research, maintaining the scientific area in the gynaecological oncology field. During the post-doc, she identified a combined glyco-mucin profile which significantly increases specificity and sensitivity of the currently available CA125 assay. Actually, Sara Ricardo is initiating her path as senior researcher, is PI of the project HOPE - Improving ovarian cancer patients’ survival where she is engaged in developing more efficient treatment regimens to overcome drug resistance responsible for cancer recurrence and, consequently, high mortality rates of ovarian cancer. She has co-coordination functions in the FCT project Blocking MUC16-mesothelin interaction to abrogate peritoneal metastization of ovarian cancer (PTDC/MEC-ONC/29503/2017). In this project she is engaged in the development of new therapeutic strategies to dissociate cancer cells aggregates present in the ascitic fluid of cancer patients impairing the implantation and the metastization of cancer cell in the peritoneal wall and peritoneal organs. She proposes the use of these therapies to perform drug efficacy tests in ovarian cancer ex vivo cultures. Sara Ricardo academic and scientific background of is now growing towards a research independence. She is supported by I3S that is an oncobiology-driven institution with solid partnerships with hospital institutions and is an active member of Porto Comprehensive Cancer Centre (PCCC), a partnership between the Portuguese Oncology Institute - Porto (IPOP). During the last year, she served as project evaluator in two funding calls and consolidated her scientific leadership being the supervisor of 2 PhD students, 1 Msc and 2 Bsc students. In parallel with the scientific career, she is a university professor, lecturing biopathology, histology and others curricular units in several pre- and post-graduated courses of the biomedical field. Above the curricular data, Sara Ricardo is moved by a mission aiming to generate data that will shed further light on the understanding of ovarian cancer biology and thus bring hope for ovarian cancer patients.

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