Hugo R. Caires received his BSc. degree in Nuclear Medicine from the ESTSP of the Polytechnic Institute of Porto, in 2010, where he became an invited assistant professor in 2011. Hugo has then moved to ICBAS/Faculty of Medicine of the University of Porto to performed his PhD studies under the supervision of Prof. Doctor Catarina Almeida, at the Microenvironments for NEWTherapies group led by Professor Doctor Mário Barbosa at INEB. Hugo’s PhD work explored the idea that biomaterials could modulate the immune response to control the recruitment and motility of mesenchymal stem cells and fibroblasts, pivotal to determine the likelihood of tissue regeneration or fibrosis. To pursue this novel concept, Hugo has developed an innovative 3D live imaging platform and physiologically relevant triple-cell co-culture 3D system which currently allows a better understanding of the underlying stromal/stem cell recruitment that controls the fate of implanted biomaterials. Under the supervision of Prof. Doctor Melba Navarro, Hugo was also involved in the fabrication of geometrically defined PLA and PLA-G5 scaffolds through 3D printing at the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC), Spain. 

Hugo did his post-doctoral research in the Cancer Drug Resistance group at IPATIMUP where he was challenged to develop novel strategies to monitor the development of multidrug resistance (MDR) and measurable residual disease (MRD) in patients with haematological malignancies. In this framework, Hugo has developed a promising Extracellular Vesicle-based liquid biopsy approach for the monitoring of both markers in Acute Myeloid Leukaemia patients’ peripheral blood. Importantly, the recognition of Hugo’s work potential for clinical application allowed him to become the Team Leader of “CLEVER Diagnostics” among the selected projects for the 2019 edition of the HiTECH entrepreneurship intensive program https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCOwcqIpvWU.

Since November 2021, Hugo is a Junior Researcher of the Bioengineered 3D Microenvironments group at i3S, led by Prof. Doctor Cristina Barrias. He is currently focused on the development of a novel organ-on-a-chip technology to study Extracellular Vesicle-mediated cryptic infections in P. Vivax.

Taken together, Hugo has developed research in different scientific domains and research environments. Importantly, he published in the most prestigious journals of his research fields. Since 2015, Hugo has published 12 full-papers in top peer-reviewed journals, 4 of them as first author, 4 as second author and 1 as corresponding author.