Castanho Team – GIMM

Website: https://gimm.pt/lab/miguel-castanho-lab/

Vera Neves, H-index 19, obtained a PhD in Bionanotechnology as a Marie Curie fellow in 2011 from the University of Surrey. She has more than 18 years’ experience in translational research, focusing on the delivery of therapeutics across the blood-brain barrier (BBB) for the treatment and diagnosis of brain diseases. Her research interests are on BBB peptide shuttles and BBB-models, including organ-on-a-chip of brain metastasis (microfluidic system). Dr. Neves has coordinated 7 projects related to BBB crossing (4 as PI), has published 44 high-impact publications (12 as corresponding author) and 4 international patents.  

Marco Cavaco (H-index 14) began his academic journey at the Lisbon School of Pharmacy, where he studied Pharmaceutical Sciences. He then continued at the Lisbon School of Medicine, completing his doctoral thesis in Biomedical Sciences in 2022 under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Miguel Castanho and Prof. Dr. Vera Neves. His research focused on designing and studying novel brain-penetrating peptides to enhance the brain accumulation of drugs, along with the development of novel anticancer agents, including anticancer peptides and antibody fragments, aimed at treating breast cancer.

After earning his PhD, Marco Cavaco began his postdoctoral work, which centred on developing better preclinical models both in vitro (e.g., patient-derived spheroids) and in vivo (e.g., patient-derived zebrafish xenografts). He also concentrated on creating improved anticancer biologics for hard-to-treat tumours, such as brain tumours, pancreatic adenocarcinoma, breast cancer, and melanoma.

Marco Cavaco’s research employs a variety of techniques and equipment, including confocal microscopy, flow cytometry, chromatography, surface plasmon resonance, and atomic force microscopy, among others.

Rúben Silva, PhD, holds a PhD in Chemistry from ULisboa (IST, 2025) and is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Biochemistry of the School of Medicine of the University of Lisbon at GIMM – Instituto Gulbenkian para a Medicina Molecular, under the supervision of Dr. Vera Neves, contributing to the Pathfinder project SMARTdrugs (Ref. 101129886). He has multidisciplinary expertise bridging organic chemistry and radiochemistry, including the implementation of the Molecular Imaging laboratory at Centro de Ciências e Tecnologias Nucleares (C2TN) – Instituto Superior Técnico (IST). He also has expertise in cell models and is certified in Laboratory Animal Sciences, providing the essential skills to conduct rigorous in vitro and in vivo testing. Rúben Silva has 13 published articles and an h-index of 8.