Flávia Magalhães

• University of Aveiro

Polydopamine (PDA), a bioinspired polymer from mussel adhesive proteins, has attracted impressive attention as a novel coating for (nano) materials with an adequate conformal layer and adjustable thickness. Currently, PDA is obtained from dopamine chemical oxidation under alkaline conditions, limiting its use in materials sensible to alkaline envir...

According to the European Environment Agency, the textile industry is responsible for 20% of global water pollution due to dyeing and finishing products, thus facing severe environmental challenges. It is essential to design more biocompatible and sustainable treatment processes capable of removing dyes from industrial wastewater to fight this envi...

Biocatalytic processes find increasing applications in various industries due to the high efficiency of biotransformations as well as the renewable nature of the enzymes and substrates. Enzymatic biocatalysis is an attractive alternative to conventional chemical catalysis, with corresponding advances now allowing a wide range of biotransformations....

Microbial biosurfactants have been emerging as promising compounds for drug-delivery systems (DDS) advances. They can be formed using diverse classes of microorganisms, being versatile biocompounds with specific surface characteristics. When compared to chemical surfactants, good biodegradability, small toxicity, and potential biological activity a...

Biocatalysis is an important area in the context of green chemistry and sustainable development, competing with traditional chemical catalytic processes. However, to be a sustainable bioprocess, the proper choice of the reaction medium plays a significant role, combined with better performance and reduced costs. Volatile organic solvents are common...

Aqueous biphasic systems (ABS) are promising for proteins purification; however, when dealing with samples comprising several proteins, the selectivity towards a target protein is difficult to achieve. In this work, the addition of ionic liquids (ILs) as adjuvants (5 and 10 wt%) in ABS composed of polyethyleneglycol (PEG) and Dextran was investigat...

Biosurfactants produced by different types of microorganisms are amphiphilic biomolecules with active surface properties. Recently, biosurfactants have emerged as promising agents for cancer therapy since a high diversity of these molecules has shown the ability to induce cytotoxicity against many cancer cell lines, thus regulating cancer progressi...

Amongst the several processes investigated in the Biotechnology field, aqueous biphasic systems (ABSs) have been a target of relevant research, particularly in the downstream processing of high-value compounds of biological nature and, more recently, in emerging applications such as in the development of artificial cells and synthetic biology, micr...

Immunoglobulin G (IgG) has been used in the treatment of cancer, autoimmune diseases and neurological disorders, however, the current technologies to purify and recover IgG from biological media are of high-cost and time-consuming, resulting in high-cost products. In this sense, the search for cost-effective technologies to obtain highly pure and a...