MIA-Portugal researcher awarded with "The L'Oréal Portugal Medals of Honor for Women in Science"

The L'Oréal Portugal Medals of Honor for Women in Science were established in 2004. This national initiative annually honors young female scientists with doctorates, aged up to 35 (plus one additional year for each child), and with promising projects in the fields of Science, Engineering, and Technology for Health or the Environment. The winners are selected from among several dozen applicants based on the relevance of their projects. Each will receive an individual prize of 15,000 euros. For the 2023 edition, the selection was made by a scientific jury chaired by Alexandre Quintanilha, a retired Full Professor and Physics researcher.

With the project “Small extracellular vesicles-based Nrf2 mRNA delivery as a therapeutic approach for Parkinson’s Disease”, Cláudia Deus expects to contribute for the advancement of scientific knowledge and to develop a new therapeutic approach for Parkinson’s Disease, a neurodegenerative disorder that affects the central nervous system, causing a progressive deterioration and loss of the brain cells responsible for controlling movement - the dopaminergic neurons. The exact mechanism by which the loss of the dopaminergic neurons occurs is not completely understood. However, there are evidences that mitochondrial dysfunction and oxidative stress are important pathophysiological components occurring even before the motor symptoms appear.

In her previous studies, Cláudia demonstrated that cellular and molecular changes characteristic of dopaminergic neurodegeneration in Parkinson’s Disease are presented in skin fibroblasts from the patients. In addition, she also demonstrated that the expression of the Nrf2 gene - a multipronged target, since it regulates the transcription of over 250 genes, creating a multifaceted network that integrates cellular activities by expressing cytoprotective genes - is decreased in Parkinson's disease.

Thus, Nrf2 activation could be achieved using Nrf2 messenger RNA (mRNA), a recent technology that has been the basis of some COVID-19 vaccines. However, mRNA therapy is limited by the need for the development of safe and efficient carriers to deliver mRNA for in vivo applications.

In this project, Cláudia proposes to use an extracellular vesicles-based delivery system for Nrf2-mRNA. Moreover, Cláudia will test the effects of this system in metabolic and mitochondrial dysfunction observed in Parkinson’s Disease by using skin fibroblasts from Parkinson’s Disease patients, and for the first time, in induced dopaminergic neurons from patients’s fibroblasts. The success of this innovative delivery system has the potential to alter the progression of Parkinsons´s disease.

The researcher: Cláudia Deus has a PhD in Experimental Biology and Biomedicine from the University of Coimbra (UC), where she continued her post-doctoral work as a researcher at the Center for Neuroscience and Cell Biology (CNC-UC). The project now awarded will be carried out at the Multidisciplinary Institute of Ageing (MIA-Portugal, UC), a new research center at the UC dedicated to studying the molecular and cellular mechanisms of ageing.

Cláudia recognizes the importance of this award considering that “there are still major differences in the opportunities and progress of women in scientific and academic careers”. One of the main barriers she identifies is associated with the persistence of gender stereotypes and cultural prejudices. With two children, aged 4 and 5, another challenge she points to is reconciling career and family life, since there are still greater social expectations regarding women's family responsibilities.