BIOENG UNIT – LaBMI

Genetic Bioengineering and Nanobiosystems UNIT

Cláudia Pereira, PhD

Team Coordination

Cláudia Pereira

PhD in Bioengineering Systems

(MIT Program, CEB-UMinho)

On a global view, cancer is an heterogenous disease that challenges a standardized diagnosis. The World Health Organization states early detection as the most effective approach to decrease the impact of this pathology, in both the health and the financial systems. However, the current techniques used rely on sophisticated equipment, proper facilities and specialized personnel, that are not available equally throughout the globe.

Our goal is to provide answers that can overcome these limitations, meeting the REASSURED criteria. We focus not only on finding new recognition elements that might play an important role towards personalized medicine but also in developing detection approaches that can help change cancer detection towards mass screening as well as optimized therapeutics.

1- Phage display

Phage display is a technique under molecular biology scope that allows not only the identification of new peptides for the recognition of biomarkers of interest but also new targets. These peptides represent a class of recognition elements with high affinity and remarkable nanotechnological applications.

2- SELEX

SELEX (Systematic Evolution of Ligands by Exponential Enrichment) represents a technique that allows the isolation of new aptamers with high sensitivity to targets of interest. As aptamers represent a class of recognition elements of increased market value with remarkable chemical and biological advantages, their application in sensing devices allow breakthrough applications in diagnostics and therapeutics.

Finally, we using aptamer biotechnologies for novel diagnostics systems with several detection technologies from colorimetry to high throughput photonics.

3- Nanobiotechnology

Nanobiotechnology is an emerging field. In the facilities we have several ongoing projects. We are developing nanobiosystems with miRNA aiming to improve cancer therapy. Another major research line is the development of biosynthesis of metal nanoparticles using bacteria.