Catarina Gomes wins Best Poster Presentation at Portuguese Glial Symposium
Catarina Gomes, PhD student at iBET’s Advanced Cell Models lab, was awarded Best Poster Presentation at the V Symposium of the Portuguese Glial Network.
In her work entitled “Exploring a human 3D stem cell-derived model to study astrocyte activation during neuroinflammation, Catarina studied the effects of neuroinflammation in astrocytes present in neurospheroids differentiated from human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) and cultured in perfusion stirred-tank bioreactors. This work highlights the potential of the neurospheroid model to investigate neuroinflammatory mechanisms associated with brain diseases, as it reproduces typical features of astrocyte activation upon exposure to pro-inflammatory factors.
The V Symposium of the Portuguese Glial Network was held in Coimbra University, on 30 November, as a satellite event of the XVII Meeting of the Portuguese Society for Neuroscience (Coimbra, 1-3 December 2021). This Symposium gathered national experts and three international invited speakers in glial cell biology who discussed their latest research on topics including the role and heterogeneity of astrocytes, microglia, and oligodendrocytes in brain and retina physiology and their contribution to the pathophysiology of several diseases.
