Beyond Bias: Personalising Medicine for Everyone
Date: 29 June 2026
Location: Main Auditorium, Building Abel Salazar
Personalised medicine promises to transform healthcare by tailoring prevention, diagnosis, and treatment to each individual's genetic profile. But this promise remains incomplete: much of the genomic research continues to focus on populations of European descent, creating a structural bias that limits its applicability and deepens inequalities in access to its benefits.
This session starts from this imbalance to question it. By bringing genetic diversity — particularly that of African populations, which concentrates the greatest human genetic variability — to the centre of the discussion, it proposes to rethink the foundations of precision medicine. Not only as an imperative of equity, but as a scientific opportunity: broadening the scope of research is also expanding what we know about human biology and disease.
In a country whose genetic and cultural history is deeply linked to Africa, this reflection takes on a particular dimension. Portugal can and should play an active role in building more inclusive research networks, in close collaboration with Portuguese-speaking African countries, contributing to the development of scientific capacities, advanced training, and the production of shared knowledge.
Integrated into the i3S 10th anniversary celebrations, this session affirms a clear vision: precision medicine that is not limited to a few, but is built for everyone — more representative, more robust, and ultimately, more just.
Language: Session in English
Registration: free but mandatory
Venue
Main Auditorium, Building Abel Salazar
Address: Largo do Prof. Abel Salazar, 4050-202, Porto
Program
17h00 Opening
Precision Medicine and Genomics
17h10 Enriching African genome representation is essential to fulfilling the promise of Precision Health (in English)
Michèle Ramsay, Sydney Brenner Institute for Molecular Bioscience, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa
17h50 Will the silent African presence in the Portuguese population be heard by personalised medicine? (in English)
João Lavinha, Instituto Nacional de Saúde Doutor Ricardo Jorge, Portugal
18h20 Break
18h40 Building scientific capacity: training, returning, transforming (movie) / (in Portuguese)
Baltazar Cá (Guinea-Bissau), Carolina Conjo (Mozambique), Isabel de Jesus Amaral (East Timor) and Mónica Medina Lopes (Cape Verde)
18h45 Roundtable: Towards a truly global medicine: science, cooperation and impact (in Portuguese)
Moderator
Alexandre Quintanilha, Commissioner for the 10th i3S Anniversary
Panellists
Maria de Jesus Ferreira, Embaixada de Angola em Portugal
Maria Hermínia Cabral, Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian
Lúcio Lara Santos, IPO-Porto e ONCOCIR—Education and Care in Oncology, PALOP—Lusophone África
Luísa Pereira, i3S - Instituto de Investigação e Inovação em Saúde da Universidade do Porto, Portugal
19h30 Closing of the celebrations
Cláudio Sunkel, i3S Director
Speakers
Luisa Pereira
Principal Researcher, i3S - Instituto de Investigação e Inovação em Saúde da Universidade do Porto, Portugal
Luísa Pereira has been a researcher since 2004 and has led the Genetic Diversity group since 2006. She is a population geneticist whose work focuses on characterising global diversity with the aim of inferring the evolution of the human species and assessing the influence of ancestry on susceptibility to and resistance against complex diseases, particularly cancer and dengue fever. She is internationally recognised for her research on the phylogeography of mitochondrial DNA, particularly in Europe, Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. She has led several national and international projects and is a co-author of over 80 articles published in international journals, with an h-index of 28. Luísa Pereira is also the coordinator of the Cancer Research Program at i3S.
Michèle Ramsay
Director of the Sydney Brenner Institute for Molecular Bioscience and Professor in Human Genetics, University of the Witwatersrand (Wits), Johannesburg, South Africa
Michèle Ramsay was born and raised in South Africa, completed her PhD at Wits, held a postdoctoral fellowship in London and returned to Wits to set up a molecular genetics diagnostic laboratory and develop a research program in human genetics. From her early work on Mendelian disorders, studying the genetic basis of cystic fibrosis, albinism and several skin diseases, she shifted her focus to the genetic architecture of common complex diseases in African populations. Her current research collaborations include studies on obesity, diabetes, hypertension, kidney disease and population genetics, leveraging the Africa Wits-INDEPTH partnership for genomic studies (AWI-Gen) that includes ~12,000 participants from South Africa, Kenya, Ghana and Burkina Faso. She was joint principal investigator for the “Wits Non-Communicable Disease Research Leadership Program” and the “Southern African Human Genome Programme”, and editor and author of a textbook, “Molecular Medicine for Clinicians” (Wits University Press, 2009). Consecutively she was president of the Southern African, then African Society for Human Genetics and the International Federation of Human Genetics Societies. Michèle is a founding member of the Human Heredity and Health in Africa Consortium (H3Africa), member of the African Population Cohorts Consortium (APCC), co-chair of the International Health Cohorts Consortium, member of the WHO Technical Advisory Group for Genomics (TAG-G) and co-chair of the Lancet Commission on Precision Health. She is committed to promoting research excellence in Africa and actively promoting capacity strengthening in the fields of genomics and precision medicine.
João Lavinha
Retired Principal Investigator at the Dr Ricardo Jorge National Institute of Health, Portugal
A pharmacist with a degree in Chemistry from the University of Lisbon and a Master’s degree in Biomedical Sciences from the University of Glasgow, João Lavinha began his career at the Dr Ricardo Jorge National Institute of Health. In 1983, he joined the Centre for Human Genetics, now the Department of Human Genetics, where he held various posts, serving as coordinator of the Molecular Biology Laboratory between 1993 and 2000. Between 2000 and 2004, he served as director of the Ricardo Jorge Institute, subsequently heading the Centre for Human Genetics and, since 2008, coordinating the department’s Research and Development Unit. Throughout his career, he has published over a hundred scientific articles in international journals and was awarded the Ministry of Health’s Gold Medal for Distinguished Service in 2017. His scientific interests focus on population-based screening for genetic diseases, prenatal diagnosis, and the molecular biology and epidemiology of rare genetic diseases, notably haemoglobinopathies, coagulopathies and cystic fibrosis. He has also carried out research in the areas of sexual development pathology, the genetics of disease susceptibility, genetic variation in Portuguese-speaking populations, genomics in public health and the analysis of the interface between environment and health.
Maria de Jesus Ferreira
Angola's Ambassador to Portugal
Maria de Jesus Ferreira holds a law degree and a master’s degree in International Law. She was the first woman to serve as Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Angola to the United Nations. She also served as Ambassador to Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, and Slovakia, with residence in Vienna. In addition, she was Permanent Representative to the UN in Vienna and Consul General in Porto. Currently, she is the appointed Ambassador of Angola to Portugal.
Maria Hermínia Cabral
Director of the Gulbenkian Program Partnerships for the Development
Maria Hermínia Cabral de Oliveira graduated in Economics from the University of Porto’s Faculty of Economics before completing a Master’s Degree in International Cooperation and Development at the Higher Institute of Economics and Management, the Technical University of Lisbon. Since then, she has had several relevant appointments, namely, between 2002 and 2003, was Head of Office for the State Secretary of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation and, between 2003 and 2004, Vice-President of the North Region Coordination and Development Commission. Between 2004 and 2005, Maria Hermínia served as Assistant State Secretary for Regional Development in the 15th Constitutional Government and manager of the Operational Health Program (Healthcare XXI). Maria Hermínia Cabral was the executive coordinator of both the Gulbenkian Environment (2007-2011) and Advanced Healthcare Training Programs (2008-2009). Currently, she is the Director of the Gulbenkian Program Partnerships for Development.
Lúcio Lara Santos
Surgeon and Principal Researcher at IPO-Porto
Lúcio Lara Santos is a surgeon, researcher, and leader of the Experimental Pathology and Therapeutics group at the Research Centre of the Portuguese Oncology Institute of Porto. He holds a PhD in Medical Sciences from the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Porto and is a professor of Surgical Oncology at Fernando Pessoa University and the Abel Salazar Institute of Biomedical Sciences of the University of Porto. He was elected as Portugal’s representative to the International Agency for Research on Cancer, a specialised agency of the World Health Organisation. His research focuses on understanding cancer mechanisms and identifying biomarkers for precision oncology. He is a member of the Group of Oncologists from the Portuguese-speaking African Countries, as well as the African Organisation for Research and Training in Cancer (AORTIC), highlighting his role in international oncology collaboration, particularly with the PALOP countries. He is also the elected representative of Portugal at the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC).
