PhD student receives EMBO fellowship to investigate colorectal cancer in the UK
Student Alexandre Coelho, from the Molecular and Cellular Biology (MCBiology) Doctoral Programme at the University of Porto (U.Porto), who is carrying out research on colorectal cancer at i3S, was recently honoured by the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) with an EMBO Scientific Exchange Grant. The fellowship will fund a three-month internship in a laboratory at the University of Cambridge, in the United Kingdom.
As a member of the “Differentiation & Cancer” group, supervised by Bruno Pereira and Raquel Almeida, Alexandre Coelho explains that his doctoral project aims to “study the mechanisms that lead to the development of chemotherapy resistance in patients with colorectal cancer.” The i3S group recently established resistance models using patient-derived organoids and has been studying a family of proteins involved in the adaptation of tumour cells to the drugs used in clinical practice.
The fellowship will allow the student to join the research group led by Anne Willis, at the Medical Research Council (MRC) Toxicology Unit, with the objective of “learning new technical skills for the large-scale identification of proteins involved in the resistance acquisition process and, potentially, improving the therapeutic response.” These three months will also allow for the “acceleration of the implementation at i3S of a new methodology with applications in various areas of biomedical research.”
“This award recognises the merit of our project and will allow for an international experience of great value for my development,” the young researcher underlines.
About EMBO Scientific Exchange Grants
EMBO Scientific Exchange Grants support exchange between research laboratories in different countries with the aim of fostering international scientific cooperation through the transfer of knowledge and specialised skills. To do this, they fund travel expenses between the home and host laboratory, as well as providing support for accommodation and living costs in the destination country.
