Luis Pereira De Almeida PhD

Luís Pereira de Almeida has been working since 1998 in gene/molecular therapy approaches for the Central Nervous System. In 2002 published one of the first papers showing that lentiviral vectors can be used to produce in vivo models of neurodegenerative diseases (e.g. Huntington's, Parkinson's, Machado-Joseph's disease), an approach on which his group specialized and that is now extensively used in the field (de Almeida LP et al The Journal of Neuroscience).

Professor at the Faculty of Pharmacy, the University of Coimbra since 2003, with tenure since 2008, teaches at the graduate and undergraduate levels, coordinated the Doctoral Programme in Experimental Biology and Biomedicine and the Masters in Pharmaceutical Biotechnology. His research activity is developed at the Center for Neuroscience and Cell Biology of the University of Coimbra (CNC), Portugal where he is the principal investigator and President. He Coordinates the Center for Innovative Biomedicine and Biotechnology https://www.cibb.uc.pt/, a large biomedical center, which integrates CNC and iCBR institutes. He spent short sabbatical leaves at CEA, Saclay in France (2005), and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2010).

The research of his group has been focused on molecular approaches for the study of the molecular mechanisms and advanced therapies for neurodegenerative disorders with a focus on Machado-Joseph disease/spinocerebellar ataxia type 3, including disease-modifying and gene silencing approaches, autophagy activation, and proteolysis inhibition, sirtuin-1 activation, etc, works published in over 90 papers and book chapters cited over four thousand times in journals such as Brain (5), Nature Communications, Cell Metabolism, Cell Reports, Acta Neuropathologica, Annals of Neurology, Human Molecular Genetics (6), Scientific Reports, PlosOne, resulting in an h-index of 40, awarded with prizes by Janssen Pharmaceutics (2016 and 2018), the Portuguese Society for Neurosciences (2009, 2011, 2012, 2013), the Portuguese Society of Human Genetics (2009), Fundação Pulido Valente and Roche -Building Tomorrow Together ideas contest. Luis Pereira de Almeida has mentored 12 pos doctoral fellows and 17 Ph.D. students and is or has been responsible for over 26 research projects funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology, the Association Française de Myopathies, private funds, the National Ataxia Foundation (USA), the Center Region of Portugal and led one of the twelve European research groups that constitute the Marie Curie Initial Training Network “TreatPolyQ” within the 7th Framework Program of the European Union. His group integrates(ed) an E-rare Eranet and 3 JPND European network projects, 2 of these - SynSpread and ModelPolyQ under his coordination.