Ana Soares

Ana Raquel Soares is an associate researcher at the Institute of Biomedicine – University of Aveiro, specialized in RNA interference, post-transcriptional regulation and protein quality control. During her PhD, she dedicated her research to RNA interference (RNAi), in particular microRNAs and uncovered novel microRNAs by next generation sequencing, generated miRNA profiles for different stages of cervical cancer and used siRNA technologies to uncover miRNA targets in animal models. After obtaining the PhD, Ana was awarded a FCT post-doctoral grant to study other small non-coding RNAs derived from tRNAs and found that those molecules were able to enter the RNAi pathway in zebrafish and were differentially expressed in infection and in cancer, an indicator of biomarker potential. Ana was also involved in the development of an animal model (zebrafish) of translation errors and found that tRNA mutations that affected translation have a potent impact on proteostasis, promoting gradual cellular degeneration. Currently, she is mainly interested in translation regulation, protein aggregation and the mechanisms that contribute to proteostasis imbalances through aging. Her research is centered in the identification of novel proteostasis-related genes that can be explored as therapeutic targets and in the characterization of protein aggregation through aging at the cellular and organismal level and its relevance for disease onset. She is also developing drug screenings to identify promising molecules that can revert protein aggregation and participated as team leader in the 2018 edition of HiTec, a technology entrepreneurship program aiming at translating scientific discoveries into business opportunities. She has co-authored 2 book chapters and 14 papers in peer reviewed ISI-indexed journals with an accumulated impact factor of ~60. Currently she leads 2 FCT-funded projects and has participated as team member in 5 other funded projects over the years.