SINAL2025 - 12th Meeting on Signal Transduction
10-11 October 2025 | i3S, Porto, Portugal
We are delighted to announce the 12th Meeting on Signal Transduction to be held in Porto, on October 10-11, 2025!
The SINAL meeting has served as a catalyst for dialogue and interdisciplinary collaboration among researchers in Biomedicine, focusing on key issues in cell biology and signal transduction, with profound implications for understanding and combating numerous human diseases. Over its various editions, SINAL has distinguished itself as an excellent forum for innovative presentations, dynamic discussions, and valuable networking opportunities, with a focus on uncovering fundamental mechanisms of cellular signaling and intracellular trafficking that underlie disease development, with the goal of translating this knowledge into clinical practice.
As in previous editions, we anticipate welcoming numerous scientists from universities and research centers across Portugal. We are honored to host esteemed international scientists who will deliver keynote lectures. A key objective of this meeting is to encourage the active participation of young researchers, ranging from master’s students to postdoctoral fellows, by providing opportunities to present their work through poster or oral presentations, thereby supporting the development of future scientific leaders.
Organization
Organizing Commitee:
Nuno Rodrigues dos Santos, i3S
Sérgia Velho, FFUP/UCIBIO
Scientific Committee:
Sérgia Velho, FFUP/UCIBIO
Nuno Rodrigues dos Santos, i3S
Henrique Girão, CIBB
João Barata, IMM
Peter Jordan, INSA
Bibiana Ferreira, ABC-RI
Margarida Fardilha, iBiMED
Paula Ludovico, ICVS
Rita Teodoro, NMS
Alexandre Carmo, i3S
Program
Day 1 | Friday, 10th
10:00 Registration
10:30 - 10:35 Welcome session
SESSION I
10:35 - 11:00 More than a scaffold: the ECM in immune modulation
Maria J. Oliveira, i3S, Porto
11:00 - 11:15 Targeting Lysosome Exocytosis as a Strategy to Inhibit Breast Cancer Cell Invasion and Tumor Microenvironment Remodeling
Ana Rita Rodrigues, iNOVA4Health, NOVA Medical School, Lisbon
11:15 - 11:30 Cell-cell adhesion loss induces stress granules formation: a survival strategy in Inflammatory Breast Cancer
Maria Miguel Castro, i3S, Porto
11:30 - 11:45 The impact of altered endosomal trafficking by Endophilin A
Filipa Gaspar-Silva, Multidisciplinary Institute of Ageing, Coimbra
11:45 - 12:30 Keynote Talk: Targeting signaling pathways in T cell leukemia
Jacques Ghysdael, Institut Curie, Orsay
12:30 - 14:00 Lunch and Poster Viewing
SESSION II
14:00 - 14:25 The role of Cx43 in intracellular trafficking regulation
Henrique Girão, iCBR, Coimbra
14:25 - 14:50 Extracelllular vesicles phosphorylation-related signalling in Alzheimer´s disease
Ana Gabriela Henriques, iBiMED, Aveiro
14:50 - 15:05 Neuroprotection by mitochondrial NAD against glutamate-induced excitotoxicity
Bruna Paiva, iBiMED, Aveiro
15:05 - 15:20 Multilayer analysis of IL-7R signaling reveals Histone Deacetylases and Sphingosine Kinases as critical regulators in acute lymphoblastic leukemia
Marta Fernandes, GIMM, Lisboa
15:20 - 16:25 Keynote Talk: Understanding why cancer therapies fail
Erik Sahai, The Francis Crick Institute, London
16:25 - 17:05 Coffee break and poster session
SESSION III
17:05 - 17:30 Mitochondria-lysosome crosstalk: kiss me, don't kiss me, just be sweet
Nuno Raimundo, MIA, Coimbra
17:30 - 17:45 Reprogrammed to Resist: Metabolic Adaptation Underlies Radiotherapy Resistance in Rectal Cancer
Diogo Estêvão, i3S, Porto
17:45 - 18:00 Extracellular Vesicles Proteomic Profile is Altered by Aβ, Modulating Signaling and Phosphorylation Dynamics
Margarida Vaz, iBiMED, Aveiro
18:00 - 18:45 Keynote Talk: Protein phosphatase-1: structural organisation and opportunities for therapeutic targeting
Mathieu Bollen, KU Leuven, Belgium
18:45 - 19:00 Closing of session
19:00 Departure for dinner (Transportation not provided)
Day 2 | Saturday, 11th
SESSION IV
09:05 - 09:30 IS5: Signaling Under Stress: ER Stress as a Modulator of Innate Immunity
Catarina R. Almeida, iBiMED, Aveiro
09:30 - 09:45 Influenza A virus and pneumococcal infections dramatically remodel the endoplasmic reticulum
Sílvia Vale-Costa, i3S, Porto
09:45 - 10:00 Adrenergic Receptors Enhance Human Glioblastoma Cell Survival via Receptor Endocytosis and Activation of ERK1/2
Glória Queiroz, UCIBIO-i4HB, Porto
10:00 - 10:15 Systemic Reprogramming of Hematopoiesis by Colorectal Tumors
Ana Luísa Machado, i3S, Porto
10:15 - 11:00 Keynote Talk: Oxygen as a potent signalling molecule in cells
Sónia Rocha, Institute of Systems, Molecular and Integrative Biology, Liverpool
11:00 - 11:30 Coffee break
SESSION V
11:30 - 11:55 Decoding the nature of T cell inhibition: from signal modulation to ligand independence
Alexandre M. Carmo, i3S, Porto
11:55 - 12:10 Identifying new players in the plasma membrane repair
Maria Soares, iCBR, Coimbra
12:10 - 12:25 ETV6::JAK2 fusion promotes central nervous system invasion in murine B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia
Telma Costa, i3S, Porto
12:25 - 12:50 Good signaling gone bad: how IL7R can deregulate lymphoid development and drive leukemia
João T. Barata, GIMM, Lisboa
12:50 - 13:00 Awards and Closing session
Speakers
Keynote Speakers
Erik Sahai, The Francis Crick Institute, UK
Principal Group Leader & Assistant Research Director - The Francis Crick Institute, London, UK
Erik Sahai is the head of the Tumour Cell Biology laboratory at the Francis Crick Institute in London. Erik obtained his PhD with Richard Treisman in London studying RhoGTPases and their effectors. He then carried out post-doctoral work in both London (Chris Marshall) and New York (John Condeelis). Following this training, Erik set up his own group at the Cancer Research UK London Research Institute in 2004 and then transferred to the Francis Crick Institute in 2015. His research is focused on the spread of cancer through the body and responses to cancer therapy. In particular, his group is interested in stromal fibroblasts and their interplay with both tumour and immune cells. To study these problems his group uses a wide range of techniques from computational modelling of cell migration, through conventional cell and molecular biology, to intravital imaging of mouse tumours and live analysis of patient derived material.
Erik’s contributions have been recognised by the award of the Hooke Medal, and election to EMBO, the European Academy of Cancer Sciences, and the Academy of Medical Sciences. He is president elect of the Metastasis Research Society and serves on the editorial board of several journals, including Journal of Cell Biology, Developmental Cell, and Trends in Cell Biology.
Research Interests: tumour microenvironment, optical imaging, cell-cell communication, metastasis, therapy failure and cancer evolution
Sónia Rocha, University of Liverpool, UK
Sonia Rocha is originally from the north of Portugal, where she obtained her undergraduate degree in Biology from Porto University, Portugal. After a year out doing a collaborative research project between Porto University and Uppsala University in Sweden, she started her PhD at the ETH-Zurich, Switzerland, working in mechanisms of ionizing radiation induced apoptosis. After completion, she then moved to the University of Dundee in Scotland to conduct postdoctoral at the Department of Biochemistry, working on the crosstalk of tumour suppressors with NF-kappaB transcription factor family. In November 2005, Sonia was appointed as Tenure Track Principal Investigator in the College of Life Sciences, University of Dundee, on a RCUK fellowship, starting her work on the field of hypoxia research. In 2010, was awarded Tenure and in 2011 she received a Cancer Research-UK Senior Research Fellowship. In 2012, she became deputy director of the Centre for Gene Regulation and Expression. In 2013, she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology and in 2014 was promoted to Reader and 2016 to full Professor. In 2017, she moved to the University of Liverpool, as Head the department of Biochemistry. In May 2020, she became Executive Dean for the Institute of Systems, Molecular and Integrative Biology at the University of Liverpool, until December 2024. She was part of the UoA5 Biological Sciences REF2021 panel. In 2024 she received the Biochemical Society Sir Philip Randle Lecture prize 2025. She is actively involved in teaching undergraduate and post-graduate students, as well in public engagement events. She serves on the scientific committees of several funding bodies (UKRI and Welcome, Finland, Poland, Ireland, Norway, Belgium) and also acts as an academic advisor or editor for several journals.
Mathieu Bollen, KU Leuven, Belgium
Current Function: Professor emeritus of Cellular and Molecular Medicine, Laboratory of Biosignaling & Therapeutics, University of Leuven, Belgium
Research interests: My laboratory explores the structure and regulation of protein phosphatases PP1 and PP2A, and their role in chromatin signaling, DNA repair and cell-cycle progression. We also aim to develop PP1 and PP2A as novel therapeutic targets for cancer therapy.
Jacques Ghysdael, Institut Curie, France
Jacques Ghysdael obtained a PhD degree at the Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium. After a post-doctoral stay at the University of Los Angeles, USA he joined the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in France. He is presently CNRS Research Director Emeritus and conducts research at Institut Curie, Orsay, France.
In the leukemia field, the team generated the first mouse T-ALL model for activated JAK (Carron C et al (2000) Blood 95 :3891-9; Dos Santos N et al (2007) Blood 109 :3972-81); identified activation of the calcineurin protein phosphatase (Cn)/NFAT pathway in lymphoid malignancies (Medyouf H et al (2007) Nat Med 13 :736-41); shown this pathway to be critical to survival/proliferation of leukemic cells and leukemia stem cell (LSC) potential (Gachet S et al (2013) Leukemia 27 :2289-300); identified effectors of Cn in T-ALL and demonstrated its role in the recycling dynamics of CXCR4, the receptor for CXCL12 (Passaro D et al (2015) Cancer Cell 27 :769-79), providing the first strong evidence for dependence of T-ALL progression upon micro-environmental signals. CXCR4 is essential to T-ALL LSC potential both in mouse T-ALL models and xenografts obtained from T-ALL patients (Passaro D et al (2015) Cancer Cell 27 :769-79). More recently the team found that T cell receptor (TCR)-positive T-ALL and PDXs derived thereof carry a latent cell death program that can be switched-on upon triggering the TCR with anti-CD3e mAbs, including the clinically-relevant Teplizumab to dominate the distinct, driving oncogenic events found in individual T-ALL cases, ultimately inducing strong anti-leukemic effects (Trinquand A et al (2016) Cancer Discov 6:972-85; Tran Quang et al (2020) Blood 136(11):1298-1302).
Recent work identified ways to further amplify the therapeutic potential of anti-CD3e mAbs (Avila Avila A et al (2024) Blood 143:2166-77 and unpublished data) and found strong anti-leukemic activity of an antibody drug conjugate targeting the anti-apoptotic BCL-XL protein specifically in T-ALL cells while avoiding platelet toxicity associated with systemic BCL-XL inhibitors (Oliveira ML et al, submitted).
Invited Speakers
João T. Barata, Gulbenkian Institute of Molecular Medicine, Lisboa
Henrique Girão, Institute for Clinical and Biomedical Research, Coimbra
Ana Gabriela Henriques, Institute of Biomedicine - iBiMED, Aveiro
Nuno Raimundo, Multidisciplinary Institute of Ageing, Coimbra
Catarina R. Almeida, Institute of Biomedicine - iBiMED, Aveiro
Maria J. Oliveira, i3S, Porto
Alexandre M. Carmo, i3S, Porto
Social Program
10th October 2025 | 20:00 | Dinner at Torreão Restaurant
Address: Rua das Virtudes 37, 4050-630 Porto
Meeting dinner fee: 35€
Abstract Submission
The call for abstracts for poster presentation will be open until the 2nd of September (notification of acceptance until 3rd of September).
Abstracts should follow the formatting rules indicated in the template below:
Registration
Registration fee includes the lunch and coffee breaks.
The participation in the meeting dinner is subject to payment (35€).
Registration fees:
Early bird registration until 25th July 2025 (Payment deadline: 25th July)
- Students (PhD, MSc or BSc)*: 45€
- Standard: 120€
Late registration until 4th September 2025 (Payment deadline: 4th September)
- Students (PhD, MSc or BSc)*: 65€
- Standard: 140€
* Students should enclose a document from their supervisor confirming their status.
Sponsors
Institutional Sponsors
Gold Sponsors
Information
More information:
Events Management Unit | Rua Alfredo Allen 208 | 4200-135 Porto, Portugal
Email: events@i3s.up.pt | Tel: +351 226 074 900