i3S researcher receives Edward Limbert Grant to investigate thyroid cancer
i3S researcher Elisabete Teixeira has been awarded the Prof. Edward Limbert Grant in Thyroid Pathology. The five-thousand-euro prize was presented during the Portuguese Congress of Endocrinology 2026, the 77th Annual Meeting of the Portuguese Society of Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism (SPEDM), in Coimbra. Elisabete Teixeira also received the first-place Clinical Research Award.
The grant was awarded to the project “Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals’ Body Exposure and Thyroid Dysfunction”, which focuses on the impact of endocrine disruptors - chemical compounds found in the environment and in everyday products - on thyroid function and the development of thyroid dysfunction and cancer.
Against a backdrop of rising global incidence of this disease, the team represented by Elisabete Teixeira uses a range of experimental models, including cell lines, organoids, and human tissues. The goal is to “contribute to disease prevention and the early identification of risks associated with environmental exposure”.
The project will be carried out at i3S within the “Cancer Signalling and Metabolism” group, led by Paula Soares. It involves the collaboration of researchers Carolina Herpst, Tiago Bordeira Gaspar, Miguel Melo, and Paula Soares.
The Prof. Edward Limbert/SPEDM/MERCK Grant in Thyroid Pathology supports training and experimental research in thyroid pathologies. It is awarded annually as part of the SPEDM congress.
Research group received three further distinctions
At the same congress, Elisabete Teixeira also won the first-place Clinical Research Award with an oral presentation on three decades of research into familial non-medullary non-syndromic thyroid cancer — a rare and still poorly understood disease.
Two other researchers from the “Cancer Signalling and Metabolism” group received honourable mentions in basic research: Gabriela Silva, for the oral presentation “Telomere Instability in Pituitary Adenomas: Insights from ATRX, DAXX, and TERT alterations”, and Miguel Castanho, for the poster “Genetic Characterization of RET Fusion Genes in Papillary and Poorly Differentiated Thyroid Cancers”.
