Universidade Do Porto
C. Oliveira is recognised internationally for her work in E-cadherin/CDH1-related diseases and hereditary cancer. She disclosed novel germline causes of Hereditary Gastrointestinal Cancer and defined somatic events in tumours with impact for patient management and therapy.
Her main scientific aim is to disclose the missing heritability in Hereditary Gastric Cancer. For this, her team is exploring the whole genome, with particular emphasis in its noncoding portion. She also aims at finding biomarkers with clinical utility for earlier detection of sporadic and hereditary gastric cancer and to disclose actionable genotype-phenotype relationships in these diseases. The social and economic impact of hereditary cancer is a transversal aspect in her research and she privileges the interaction with Patient’s associations, such as EVITA.
C. Oliveira has been a PI of projects funded with >3.8M€ and team member in projects with equivalent total budget. She independently raised additional 2.5M€ for human resources. She was invited speaker in >120 National and International conferences; she is the Executive Committee Secretary General of the European Society of Human Genetics (ESHG), member of its Scientific Program Committee and vice-coordinator of the Scientific Program Committee of the Portuguese Society of Human Genetics (SPGH); National Coordinators and Representative of the Porto.Comprehensive Cancer Centre (P.CCC) in the European Reference Network ERN-GENTURIS on genetic tumour risk syndromes, and; the head the Hereditary Diffuse Gastric Cancer branch of the SolveRD (Solving Rare diseases) EU-Project. She is a member of the Portuguese Group of Hereditary Tumours (PROGO) promoted by The Portuguese Society of Oncology. She is regular reviewer of National and International fellowship and grant applications. She successfully supervised 15 Masters and 14 PhD students to completion, 11 post-docs and recruited 4 junior project leaders (iFCT) for her team.
C. Oliveira’s group has also gained expertise and visibility in genomics and bioinformatics, due to active participation in international consortia and large European Projects including the European-wide research project SOLVE-RD – Solve Rare diseases; the Consortium GEUVADIS and GTEx; Several COST actions, as well as the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Innovative Training Networks ITN TRAIN-EV. The group has relevant roles in management and executive functions in the GenomePT National Infrastructure for genome sequencing and the 1 Million European Genomes project. Her team is multidisciplinary with strong background in oncobiology and genetics, and supported by technical expertise in molecular and cellular biology, NGS, bioinformatics and a strong link with hospitals and clinical professionals. Her team was recently awarded with the Prize Alfredo da Silva on “Sustentabilidade de sistemas de saúde” for the work on optimized pathways of care in Hereditary cancer syndromes.
Highlights
The “EXPRESSION REGULATION IN CANCER” group aims, in the next three years, to identification cancer-associated expression regulatory mechanisms that impact early diagnosis, prognosis and chemotherapy-induced resistance in cancer.
Specific aims:
1. Identify the molecular basis of familial gastric cancer (HDGC and Familial Intestinal Gastric Cancer - FIGC);
2. Uncover somatic regulation in gastric cancer and its relationship with patients’ prognosis;
3. Optimize tools for early diagnosis of gastric cancer;
4. Uncover mechanisms involved in metastasis and chemotherapy-induced resistance using Epithelial-Mesenchymal-Epithelial transitions (EMT/MET) experimental models;
5. Unravel the role of mRNA mistranslation in human cancer.