Two international grants to study cholesterol in colorectal cancer

Awarded with two international scholarships, Ana Luísa Machado, student of the PhD program in Biomedicine, at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Porto (FMUP) and doing research at i3S, will intern for four months in Leiden, in the Netherlands, to study the influence of cholesterol on the tumor microenvironment of colorectal cancer.

Ana Luísa Machado won a FEBS Summer Fellowship, awarded by the European Federation of Biochemical Societies, and a Short Term Fellowship, awarded by EFIS, the European Federation of Immunological Societies. These are grants that financially support the stay of young researchers for a short period in a European laboratory. In this case, the researcher will be in the “Cancer Immunogenomics” laboratory, led by Noel de Miranda, who, together with researcher Sérgia Velho, from the “Epithelial Interactions in Cancer” group at i3S, is also co-supervisor of Ana Luísa Machado.

The work, explains the doctoral student, consists of “studying the influence of cholesterol on the modulation of the immune microenvironment of colorectal cancer through a bioinformatics approach”. The initial analyses, carried out in collaboration with researcher Verónica Fernandes, from the Genetic Diversity (i3S) group, says Ana Luísa Machado, “demonstrated that colorectal cancers can be divided into two subgroups according to the expression of several genes associated with pathways of cholesterol metabolism. Initially, these two subgroups appear to have distinct molecular and clinicopathological characteristics, as well as different microenvironments”.
In Leiden, the researcher will try to complete this project by validating the results in a different colorectal cancer cohort, “enjoying collaboration with experts in the field of bioinformatics applied to immunogenomics”.

Winning these scholarships represents an “important milestone” in Ana Luísa Machado's scientific career, as she will have the opportunity to “do research work in a renowned European laboratory, with a stimulating and enriching environment and in a group of excellence in the area of immunology in the context of tumors”. Furthermore, she adds, “it is a very important opportunity to increase my knowledge in bioinformatics, an area that is still new to me, but very stimulating”.