Ana Chegão, PhD student of the DysBrainD: Dysmetabolism in Brain Diseases Group led by Hugo Vicente Miranda, has been awarded an EMBO short-term fellowship for the project entitled “Potential of anti-diabetes medication in ameliorating aSyn pathology”.
The project aims to screen different pharmacological compounds in a drosophila model of Parkinson's disease to assess their therapeutic potential to ameliorate this disease, since currently there are no preventive, restorative or disease-modifying treatments.
The EMBO short-term fellowship will take place at the laboratory of Professor Flaviano Giorgini at University of Leicester, in the United Kingdom. This is an unique opportunity since his laboratory offers the best scientific and technical expertise for the successful development of this task, and is led by an expert in neurodegeneration, with seminal publications exploiting Drosophila melanogaster to study neurodegenerative diseases.
This prestigious fellowship will allow Ana to significantly push her current research work to higher standards. The screening Ana Chegão is going to perform will allow the team to select the pharmacological compounds with highest therapeutic potential to be validated in a mouse model of the disease. Moreover, this fellowship will offer Ana the opportunity to work abroad at an international environment of excellence and to gather significant training in using drosophila as a model system to investigate neurodegenerative diseases.
Moreover, the proposed project and the EMBO fellowship will not only allow to significantly advance the group’s research work to the highest standards, but it will also strengthen the collaboration with Professor Flaviano Giorgini, increasing the overall expertise of Vicente Miranda’s laboratory.