ICVS Seminar ” Vascular sequestration of trypanosome parasites and its implications to disease “

Next monday, 17th of april, at 1 pm, don’t miss Sara Silva Pereira’s seminar ” Vascular sequestration of trypanosome parasites and its implications to disease “ at the A0.02 auditorium in UMinho’s School of Medicine.

Sara Silva Pereira completed her PhD in Veterinary Parasitology, in 2018, at the University of Liverpool (UK), where she investigated antigenic diversity of African trypanosomes parasites.
In 2019, she was awarded a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship to study how variant antigens affect T. congolense tissue tropism at the laboratory of Luisa Figueiredo, in Instituto de Medicina Molecular (Lisbon). There, she discovered that Trypanosoma congolense sequestration, or adhesion to the vascular endothelium, is a virulence factor, suggesting that severe trypanosomiasis may be preventable by targeting parasite sequestration mediators. In 2022, Sara moved to the Bernabeu Laboratory at the EMBL Barcelona to develop a 3D in vitro model of bovine brain vasculature, a platform that allows direct assessment of sequestration. In 2023, the Silva Pereira Laboratory will open at the Católica Biomedical Research Centre to investigate the interactions of trypanosomes with the host vasculature.