Margarida Serra

Head of Stem and Immune Cells Bioengineering Lab | Advisor to the Executive Committee / Bioengineering for Cell-based Therapies

mserra@ibet.pt

Biography

I am the head of Stem and Immune Cells Bioengineering Lab at iBET.

I am a Biological Engineer from Instituto Superior Técnico, with a PhD in Engineering and Technology Sciences- Biomedical Engineering from ITQB-NOVA. Working at iBET since 2004, my PhD focused on the design of bioprocesses to produce human stem cells for clinical applications. I did part of my PhD studies at the Fraunhofer Institute for Biomedical Engineering (Germany), Cellartis AB (Sweden), and University Hospital of Cologne (Germany).

Current research at iBET, with funding from EU programs, FCT, and private funding from the Pharmaceutical Industry, is driven by the vision of bridging engineering and cell/development biology to accelerate the manufacturing of next generation cell therapies. The key research line has been focused on developing novel nature-inspired bioprocesses, combining 3D culture approaches and bioreactor technology to recreate environmental conditions to excel growth/differentiation/maturation of human (stem) cells and the production of derived extracellular vesicles. This knowledge has recently been applied to improve the manufacturing of CAR-T cells. Aiming at accelerating the translation of cell therapy products into the clinic, we have been integrating omics methodologies and process analytical tools (PAT) to support bioprocess understanding and optimization, and to provide a more comprehensive characterization of cells’ quality attributes including identity and potency.

I have been an invited Assistant Professor at FCT-NOVA since 2018 and coordinator and lecturer in curricular units of several MSc and PhD programs.