Inflammation Cell Signaling and Therapeutics

Inflammation is a response of the host to infection or tissue damage and has the physiological purpose of restoring tissue homeostasis. However, uncontrolled or unresolved inflammation can lead to excessive and continuous tissue damage, giving rise to a plethora of chronic inflammatory disorders, including chronic skin wounds, premature aging, cardiovascular disease, cancer, autoimmunity and neurodegenerative disorders, that collectively represent the leading causes of disability and mortality worldwide. The aims of the InflammaSignal team are focused on better understanding the coordinated activation of different signaling pathways that regulate the host inflammatory response and on developing innovative therapeutic/diagnostic strategies for the underlying mechanisms of inflammatory chronic diseases. The activity of the InflammaSignal team is translation-oriented with interdisciplinary and complementary expertise dedicated to both biomedical and clinical research, which promotes a creative environment spanning from bench to bedside.

Through effective research actions and key well-established collaborations with academy and pharma/biotech partners, the InflammaSignal team gathers critical mass in different fields of expertise to achieve integration of fundamental (through ICVS) and clinical (through 2CA) sciences and enabling state-of-the-art technologies, with the aims of expediting the discovery and validation of high value products and processes (through B.ACIS) that inroads into reducing the burden of chronic inflammatory disease.

RESEARCH TOPICS

The most relevant areas of action in the research of our team are:

Chronic inflammatory infectious diseases;
Chronic inflammation in non-infectious diseases.

The InflammaSignal team has successfully gathered researchers with complementary expertise with a strong common track record of publications and funded projects.

The PhD and MD/PhD members of the InflammaSignal team are currently affiliated and developing research activities in different institutions of the Health Cluster of the Medical School of the University of Minho (EM/UMinho), namely at ICVS (research in biomedicine and translation), 2CA (clinical studies) and B.ACIS (knowledge transfer) and are committed to merge efforts to foster a bench to bedside approach to R&D on inflammatory diseases.

Aiming at opening new interfaces of research at the ICVS, the InflammaSignal team has successfully raised funds not only from national and international funding agencies, but have also recently started pharma-funded projects for the development of novel diagnostic and therapeutic tools against chronic inflammatory diseases.

Team Members

Projects

Jorge Pedrosa

A flexible platform for generating synthetic virus to control infectious diseases

Life-threatening human infectious diseases caused by bacterial pathogens are now re-emerging, in part due to the increased resistance to antibiotics. Antibiotics are non-specific, they can target a wide group of bacteria, perturbing our natural microbiota. This fact, besides…

Carlos Capela

Buruli ulcer – Family-Based Whole Exosome Sequencing (FamBasedBU-WES)

Buruli Ulcer (BU) is a neglected infectious disease responsible for massive necrotic skin lesions. BU is the third most common mycobacteriosis worldwide, with higher incidence rates reported in poor-income countries of Africa, of which over 50% of patients are children…

Alexandra Fraga

Immunometabolic requirements in Buruli Ulcer

Mycobacterium ulcerans is the causative agent of Buruli Ulcer (BU), a neglected tropical disease characterized by extensive necrotic skin lesions. M. ulcerans, although an intracellular pathogen, is able to secrete a cytotoxic and immunosuppressive toxin – mycolactone…

Jorge Pedrosa

In vitro screening-based selection and in vivo efficacy evaluation of bacteriophages as potential new assets in the topical treatment of Buruli Ulcer disease

Buruli Ulcer (BU) is a NTD caused by Mycobacterium ulcerans infection. The progression of the disease affects primarily the skin…

Paula Ludovico

Novel Biomarkers in Fabry disease Progression

Fabry disease (FD) a is multi-systemic, X-linked lysosomal storage disease caused by a range of mutations in the GLA gene that encodes for alpha-galactosidase A (α-gal A). Mutations leading to a deﬁcient or absent activity of the enzyme α-gal A result in a progressive accumulation…