MSc in Biomedical Engineering, NOVA School of Science and Technology, NOVA University Lisbon, Portugal, 2022
BSc in Biomedical Engineering Sciences, NOVA School of Science and Technology, NOVA University Lisbon, Portugal, 2019
Extracellular vesicles (EVs) have increasingly come to be seen as promising therapeutic agents, having the potential to overcome many of the drawbacks currently associated with cellular therapies. Despite this, EVs are still far from entering into regular clinical practice, mostly because their mode of action remains poorly understood and there is an acute lack of large-scale EV production methodologies. My current work is concerned with the exploration of strategies capable of establishing an economically viable, scalable and robust approach to the production of EVs. Specifically, within the scope of my PhD, I am looking to develop an integrated bioprocess for the production of EVs from human induced pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes in bioreactors. Aside from such a bioprocess being essential for the generation of EVs in large numbers, it will also serve as a platform for studying and characterizing the produced cardiomyocyte EVs. This will be done by evaluating how their contents and therapeutic potential are impacted by changing their culture conditions, namely through the simulation of an acute myocardial infarction environment. Along with the comparison of cardiomyocyte EVs with EVs obtained from other cell types, this should contribute towards a better understanding of the mode of action of EVs.
