Miguel Xavier

Miguel Xavier
International Iberian Nanotechnology Laboratory · Medical Devices

PhD
Miguel Xavier is a Staff Researcher at the Medical Devices Research Group at the International Nanotechnology Laboratory

About

31
Publications
11,739
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362
Citations
Introduction
Miguel Xavier obtained his MSc in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Porto in 2012 and his PhD from the University of Southampton in 2018. His research interests focus on the application of microfluidic solutions to life sciences including label-free cell sorting and continuous flow organ-on-chip models. Currently Miguel works at the International Iberian Nanotechnology Laboratory (INL) where he aims to develop novel microfluidics technologies to tackle cancer and metastasis.
Additional affiliations
October 2018 - present
International Iberian Nanotechnology Laboratory
Position
  • Research Associate
Description
  • MICRODIGEST - Development of a Gut-On-Chip platform
October 2018 - April 2021
International Iberian Nanotechnology Laboratory
Position
  • Research Associate
November 2017 - July 2018
University of Southampton
Position
  • Technician
Description
  • Nanoflares for the isolation of skeletal stem cells from human bone marrow.
Education
September 2014 - May 2018
University of Southampton
Field of study
  • Label-free, microfluidic characterisation and sorting of human skeletal stem cells
September 2007 - October 2012
University of Porto
Field of study
  • BioEngineering

Publications

Publications (31)
Article
Full-text available
Skeletal stem cells (SSCs) are a sub-population of mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs) present in bone marrow with multipotent differentiation potential. A current unmet challenge hampering their clinical translation remains the isolation of homogeneous populations of SSCs, in vitro, with consistent regeneration and differentiation capacities. Cell st...
Article
Full-text available
Drug delivery to the central nervous system is restricted by the blood-brain barrier (BBB). However, with the onset of stroke, the BBB becomes leaky, providing a window of opportunity to passively target the brain. Here, cationic poly(amido amine) (PAMAM) dendrimers of different generations were functionalized with poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) to re...
Article
Full-text available
Skeletal stem cells (SSCs) are present in bone marrow (BM) and offer great potential for bone regenerative therapies. However, in the absence of a unique marker, current sorting approaches remain challenging in the quest for simple strategies to deliver SSCs with consistent regeneration and differentiation capacities. Microfluidics offers the possi...
Article
Human bone marrow (BM)-derived stromal cells contain a population of skeletal stem cells (SSCs), with the capacity to differentiate along the osteogenic, adipogenic, and chondrogenic lineages, enabling their application to clinical therapies. However, current methods to isolate and enrich SSCs from human tissues remain, at best, challenging in the...
Article
Full-text available
Background The use of nanomaterials in the food and feed chain is expected to keep increasing in the years to come. While this brings exciting prospects to both industry and consumers, it also entails important considerations regarding their risk assessment and potential detrimental effects following human exposure. Aiming to standardise the risk a...
Preprint
Neurological disorders, a leading global cause of death, encompass conditions affecting the peripheral and central nervous systems (PNS and CNS, respectively). Limited axon regeneration is a significant challenge in these disorders, and it is linked to proteins like PTEN. RNA-based therapeutics, particularly siRNAs, hold potential for silencing the...
Preprint
Gene therapy using small interfering RNA (siRNA) holds promise for treating neurological disorders by silencing specific genes, such as the phosphatase and tensin homolog (PTEN) gene, which restricts axonal growth. Yet, delivering siRNA to neurons efficiently is challenging due to premature degradation and unspecific delivery. Chitosan-based delive...
Article
Full-text available
Reliable in-vitro digestion models that are able to successfully replicate the conditions found in the human gastrointestinal tract are key to assess the fate and efficiency of new formulations aimed for oral consumption. However, current in-vitro models either lack the capability to replicate crucial dynamics of digestion or require large volumes...
Preprint
Full-text available
Reliable in-vitro digestion models that are able to successfully replicate the conditions found in the human gastrointestinal tract (GIT) are key to assess the fate and efficiency of new formulations aimed for oral consumption. However, current in-vitro models either lack the capability to replicate crucial dynamics of digestion or require large vo...
Article
Full-text available
Inflammatory bowel disease causes a major burden to patients and healthcare systems, raising the need to develop effective therapies. Technological advances in cell culture, allied with ethical issues, have propelled in vitro models as essential tools to study disease aetiology, its progression, and possible therapies. Several cell‐based in vitro m...
Article
Full-text available
Reproducible in vitro studies of bioaccessibility, intestinal absorption, and bioavailability are key to the successful development of novel food ingredients or drugs intended for oral administration. There is currently a lack of methods that offer the finesse required to study these parameters for valuable molecules typically found in small volume...
Article
Full-text available
Short chain fatty acids (SCFA) are hypothesised to play a key role in the microbiota-gut-brain crosstalk. However, studies that evaluate the effect of microbiota-targeted interventions, such as prebiotics, probiotics or diet are still sparse, particularly in humans. In this work, the products of fermentation of prebiotic-enriched media by bacteria...
Chapter
In recent years, we have seen major advances in the field of liquid biopsy and its implementation in the clinic, mainly driven by breakthrough developments in the area of molecular biology. New developments have seen an integration of microfluidics and also biosensors in liquid biopsy systems, bringing advantages in terms of cost, sensitivity and a...
Article
Full-text available
Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) is ubiquitously used in microfluidics. However, PDMS is porous and hydrophobic, potentially leading to small molecule partitioning. Although many studies addressed this issue and suggested surface/bulk modifications to overcome it, most were not quantitative, did not address which variables besides hydrophobicity governe...
Article
Grape pomace (GP) is a major by-product from the wine industry, known for its bioactive compounds and their impact upon gastrointestinal (GI) health. However, bioaccessibility is often poor due to their degradation during digestion. This work aimed to encapsulate bioactive GP extract (GPE) into chitosan (CS) and alginate (Alg) nanoparticles (NPs) t...
Preprint
Full-text available
Human bone marrow (BM) derived stromal cells contain a population of skeletal stem cells (SSCs), with the capacity to differentiate along the osteogenic, adipogenic and chondrogenic lineages enabling their application to clinical therapies. However, current methods, to isolate and enrich SSCs from human tissues remain, at best, challenging in the a...
Article
Full-text available
Background Oral administration remains the most common mode of drug delivery. However, orally administered bioactive compounds must first survive digestion and then be absorbed at the intestine in order to reach other tissues or organs. The efficiency of both processes can be improved by encapsulation or conjugation with polymeric nanoparticles. He...
Thesis
Full-text available
Skeletal stem cells (SSCs) are a sub-population of bone marrow (BM) stromal cells with multipotent differentiation potential. SSCs are responsible for the unique regeneration ca­pacity inherent to bone and offer unlimited potential for application in bone regenerative therapies. A current unmet challenge hampering their clinical translation remains...
Article
Full-text available
The capacity of bone and cartilage to regenerate can be attributed to skeletal stem cells (SSCs) that reside within the bone marrow (BM). Given SSCs are rare and lack specific surface markers, antibody-based sorting has failed to deliver the cell purity required for clinical translation. Microfluidics offers new methods of isolating cells based on...
Data
Supportive supplementary material including individual patient data of fluorescence flow cytometry measurements (Fig. S1), individual scatter plots of microfluidic impedance cytometry data of human bone marrow mononuclear cells (Fig. S2), simulation data of the impedance response of cells with different membrane capacitance and radii (Fig. S3), ind...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Skeletal stem cells (SSCs) reside in human bone marrow and have multipotent differentiation capacity offering significant potential for skeletal tissue regeneration. However, in the absence of a specific cell surface marker, current isolation methods lack the purity required for clinical translation. Microfluidics could provide approaches for cell...
Article
Skeletal stem cells (SSC) are a sub-population of bone marrow stromal cells that reside in postnatal bone marrow with osteogenic, chondrogenic and adipogenic differentiation potential. SSCs reside only in the bone marrow and have organisational and regulatory functions in the bone marrow microenvironment and give rise to the haematopoiesis-supporti...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Skeletal stem cells (SSC) represent a sub-population of mesenchymal stem cells, which can be found in the bone marrow with osteogenic, chondrogenic and adipogenic differentiation potential. However, a challenge remains to obtain, in vitro, a population of cells with homogeneous regeneration and differentiation capacities. Challenges include a) the...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
The central nervous system (CNS) and the periphery are closely associated in the regulation of body homeostasis. In fact, in both physiological and pathological conditions, the CNS showed to be targeted by peripheral system molecules, which are able to generate adaptive responses under the tight control of the hypothalamus. In spite of having a wel...
Thesis
Full-text available
The high mortality rates of gastric cancer (GC) make it one of the deadliest variants in present days and urge the need for tumour diagnosis at an earlier stage. Current diagnostic means are based on the technique of gastroscopy which fails to identify neoplastic cells usually located in the tissues underneath the stomach epithelium. The associatio...

Questions

Questions (2)
Question
I need a simple protocol to balance the density of my suspending buffer to that of the cells in suspension to prevent them from settling. What would be the best approach? Which additive would be more adequate? Ficoll?
Question
From an original stack with 35 slices and 3 channels, I have divided it into 2 stacks, both with the same 3 channels but the first with the first 15 slices and the second with the last 17 slices. Next, I have adjusted the brightness and contrast of these two substacks separately on each channel. Now, I would like to re-concatenate the substacks but maintaining the brightness and contrast adjustments separate...
Can anyone help me with this?

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