Vanda Marques

• PhD
• University of Lisbon

Marine sponges are highly efficient in removing organic pollutants and their cultivation, adjacent to fish farms, is increasingly considered as a strategy for improving seawater quality. Moreover, these invertebrates produce a plethora of bioactive metabolites, which could translate into an extra profit for the aquaculture sector. Here, we investig...

The increasing prevalence of obesity brings forward its importance as a risk factor for cancer development, particularly in the gastrointestinal tract. Obesity may trigger cancer development through several mechanisms, where metabolic deregulation of adipokines can modulate multiple oncogenic molecular pathways. Leptin and adiponectin are the most...

In vitro cell cultures are used as models for drug discovery. The detection of cell damage biomarkers such as adenylate kinase (AK) is often used in drug screening and cell biology experiments. A microfluidic platform for AK detection was developed with the capability of detecting the AK resulting from the lysis of 10–100 human colorectal adenocarc...

In the last decade, research into human hepatology has been revolutionized by the development of mini human livers in a dish. These liver organoids are formed by self-organizing stem cells and resemble their native counterparts in cellular content, multicellular architecture, and functional features. Liver organoids can be derived from liver tissue...

Hepatocytes work in highly structured, repetitive hepatic lobules. Blood flow across the radial axis of the lobule generates oxygen, nutrient, and hormone gradients that result in zoned spatial variability and functional diversity. This large heterogeneity suggests that hepatocytes in different lobule zones may have distinct gene expression profile...

Curcumin has a plethora of biological properties, making this compound potentially effective in the treatment of several diseases, including cancer. However, curcumin clinical use is compromised by its poor pharmacokinetics, being crucial to find novel analogues with better pharmacokinetic and pharmacological properties. Here, we aimed to evaluate...

The aggressiveness of melanoma and lack of effective therapies incite the discovery of novel strategies. Recently, a new dual acting hybrid molecule (HM), combining a triazene and a ʟ-tyrosine analogue, was synthesized. HM was designed to specifically be activated by tyrosinase, the enzyme involved in melanin biosynthesis and overexpressed in melan...

Response to chemoradiotherapy (CRT) in patients with locally advanced rectal cancer is highly variable. Identification of CRT non-responders and definite accurate biomarkers of response are unmet needs. In turn, adipokines might impact on colorectal cancer development. We hypothesized that imbalance in leptin and adiponectin modulates stemness pote...

Antibody therapy has been one of the most successful therapies for a wide range of diseases, including cancer. One way of expediting antibody therapy development is through phage display technology. Here, by screening thousands of randomly assembled peptide sequences, it is possible to identify potential therapeutic candidates. Conventional screeni...

MDM2 and MDM4 are key negative regulators of p53, an important protein involved in several cell processes (e.g. cell cycle and apoptosis). Not surprisingly, the p53 tumor suppressor function is inactivated in tumors overexpressing these two proteins. Therefore, both MDM2 and MDM4 are considered important therapeutic targets for an effective reactiv...

Necroptosis has emerged as an exciting target in oncological, inflammatory, neurodegenerative, and autoimmune diseases, in addition to acute ischemic injuries. It is known to play a role in innate immune response, as well as in antiviral cellular response. Here we devised a concerted in silico and experimental framework to identify novel RIPK1 inhi...

Breast cancer is a high-burden malignancy for society, whose impact boosts a continuous search for novel diagnostic and therapeutic tools. Among the recent therapeutic approaches, photothermal therapy (PTT), which causes tumor cell death by hyperthermia after being irradiated with a light source, represents a high-potential strategy. Furthermore, t...

Background: Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is the most common chronic liver disease where liver biopsy remains the gold standard for diagnosis. Here we aimed to evaluate the role of circulating adiponectin, leptin, and insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1) levels as non-invasive NAFLD biomarkers and assess their correlation with the metabo...

INTRODUCTION The current exploitation levels of Earth's finite resources have reached a point of no return with expected dramatic consequences if continued exploitation remains as is. Furthermore, polluting industries aggravate the environmental impact of human activities. Pharmaceutical industry is amongst these polluting industries as most of the...

Regulated necrosis or necroptosis, mediated by receptor-interacting kinase 1 (RIPK1), RIPK3 and pseudokinase mixed lineage kinase domain-like protein (MLKL), contributes to the pathogenesis of inflammatory, infectious and degenerative diseases. Recently identified necroptosis inhibitors display moderate specificity, suboptimal pharmacokinetics, off...

Gigartina pistillata is a red seaweed common in Figueira da Foz, Portugal. Here, the antitumour potential of G. pistillata carrageenan, with a known variable of the life cycle, the female gametophyte (FG) and tetrasporophyte (T) was evaluated against colorectal cancer stem cell (CSC)-enriched tumourspheres. FTIR-ATR analysis of G. pistillata carrag...

The seaweeds and its compounds are gaining interest from the pharmaceutical area for new natural compounds with bioactivities, such as antitumor. Gigartina pistillata is a red seaweed that is common in Figueira da Foz, Portugal. The carrageenans from G. pistillata differ between life cycle phases with the gametophytes producing a hybrid Kappa/Iota...

In this work, we present a microfluidic system that allows the culturing of cells from human colon cancer for a minimum of 48h. The cell culture is then used to capture specific binding phages which can be retrieved for replication and analysis. This system represents a stepping stone towards a simple phage selection system.

The infection of Helicobacter pylori, covering 50% of the world-population, leads to diverse gastric diseases as ulcers and cancer along the life-time of the human host. To promote the discovery of biomarkers of bacterial infection, in the present work, Fourier-transform infrared spectra were acquired from adenocarcinoma gastric cells, incubated wi...

Purpose: MicroRNAs (miRs) are important regulators of cellular and molecular mechanisms of disease. miRs are differentially expressed in patients with Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy (HCM), the most common cardiac genetic disease. Our group has identified several de-regulated miRs in a group of obstructive HCM patients. Our aim is to validate these miR...

Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy (HCM) is a complex myocardial disorder with a recognized genetic heterogeneity. The elevated number of genes and mutations involved in HCM limits a gene-based diagnosis that should be considered of most importance for basic research and clinical medicine. In this report, we evaluated High Resolution Melting (HRM) robustn...

Figure 1a) Melting curves of exon 9 of the MYH7 gene (NM_000257). b) Difference plot of the melting curves. The arrows in both figures indicate the wild-type (wt) profile and patient 18 respective variations. Three healthy control individuals were used has a reference curve. The altered profile was also obtained for patients 27 and 38.c) Melting cu...

Figure 2a) Melting curves of exon 23(1) of the MYBPC3 gene (NM_000256). b) Difference plot of the melting curves. The arrows in both figures indicate the wild-type (wt) profile and patient 22 respective variations. Two healthy control individuals were used has a reference curve; c) Melting curves of exon 25 of the MYBPC3 gene (NM_000256). d) Differ...

Figure 3a) Melting curves of exon 15 of the TNNT2 gene (NM_000364). b) Difference plot of the melting curves. The arrows in both figures indicate the wild-type (wt) profile and patient 71 respective variations. Nine healthy control individuals were used has a reference curve. c) Melting curves of exon 7 of the TNNI3 gene (NM_000363). d) Difference...

Table 1Genomic regions covered in HRM analysis. Primer sequences and PCR conditions for HCM-associated genes mutation scanning by HRM are described.

Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM), a complex myocardial disorder with an autosomal dominant genetic pattern and prevalence of 1:500, is the most frequent cause of sudden death in apparently healthy young people. The benefits of gene-based diagnosis of HCME for both basic research and clinical medicine are limited by the considerable costs of curren...