Susana Lopes, principal investigator of the cilia regulation and disease laboratory at cedoc-nms, won the prestigious maratona da saúde award in biomedical research. It's going to allow research in primary ciliary dyskinesia (pcd), a rare disease studied by susana's group.
In partnership with RTP+, Maratona da Saúde combines science with entertainment through an annual solidarity, which aims to encourage the involvement of the Portuguese in health issues and raise donations to fund excellent scientific research carried out in Portugal.
"This award will allow you to make more models of Primary Ciliary Dyskinesia disease in zebrafish and test their messenger RNA therapy. We had promising results (not yet published) with the first model for the CCDC40 protein. The disease in question will need a specialized therapy for each mutated gene, until now we had only one animal model for a protein, the one that causes a more severe disease" says Susana Lopes. "With the Maratona da Saúde award we will make a specific model for proteins that most frequently cause Primary Ciliary Dyskinesia disease such as DNAH5".