iBB

Cátia Filipa Medina Bandeiras will be defending her PhD thesis in Bioengineering (MIT Portugal Program) on Friday the 8th November 2019 (14 H, amphitheater PA-3, Mathematics Building). During the last years, and under the supervision of Frederico Ferreira from SCERG and BERG-IBB and Stan Finkelstein from MIT, Cátia developed an open-source framework for combined bioprocess and health economics modeling, aiming at the evaluation of stem cell engineering innovations towards the commercialization of stem cell-based therapies. She used this framework to evaluate the impact of manufacturing component choices, like culture media and expansion technologies, the scale of manufacturing, and the long-term cost-effectiveness of stem cell-based therapies for type 1 diabetes and cystic fibrosis. This computational approach, based on experimental data, provided cues for additional reductions in the cost of goods, and recommendations for precision medicine of these prospective therapies. The title of the thesis is “TESSEE – Tool for Early Stem Cells Economic Evaluation”