iBB

Irina Neves Simões  has defended her Ph D thesis in Bioengineering (MIT Portugal program) at Instituto Superior Técnico on the 27th November 2015. During the last years, and under the supervision of Cláudia Lobato da Silva from BERG-IBB and Pedro Baptista from Aragon Health Sciences Institute, Irina has investigated tissue engineering approaches to construct urethra bioscaffolds.  The title of her thesis is “Tissue Engineering Approaches to Stress Urinary Incontinence using Acellular Urethra Bioscaffolds”. 

Ana Marisa Mendes Gonçalves Vinhais Guedes will be defending her Ph D thesis in Bioengineering (MIT Portugal program) at Instituto Superior Técnico, thursday the 25th February 2016 (13:00 H, complexo interdisicplinar). During the last years, and under the supervision of Domingos Henriques from iMM and Cláudia Lobato Silva from BERG-IBB, Ana focused her efforts on the study of the molecular mechanisms regulating pluripotency. The title of Ana's  thesis is “Analysis of the gene regulatory network underlying pluripotenciality in mouse embryonic stem cells”. 

Researchers from BERG-iBB and the Prather lab at MIT developed a pgi gene knockout E. coli strain with the specific goal of producing large amounts of plasmid DNA vectors. The new strain was tested by Nature Technology Corporation in the US, yielding 2100-2200 mg plasmid DNA per L in 14 L bioreactors. The strain may be usefull in the large scale production of plasmid-based gene transfer vectors with application in  gene therapy, DNA vaccination and recombinant protein production by transient transfection. The research was developed under the framework of the MIT-Portugal program and is a direct result of Geisa Gonçalves (in the photo) Ph D. thesis in Bioengineering. Click on title to learn more.