Present collaborators

Marta P. Carrasco

Marta P. Carrasco

Marta Carrasco is a post-doc developing a homology model for the ABCB5 transporter that was recently linked to multidrug resistance in metastatic melanoma (the most aggressive skin cancer). Marta has a REQUIMTE post-doc fellowship in co-supervision with Prof. Natália Cordeiro.

Marta graduated in Chemistry from IST (Technical Institute) of the University of Lisbon and holds also an M.Sc. degree in Chemistry from the same university. Later she moved to the Faculty of Pharmacy of the University of Lisbon to pursue a PhD in Medicinal Chemistry where she developed a project in antimalarial drugs (computational modeling and experimental work). After finishing her PhD, she engaged on a post-doc fellowship in University of Gothenburg (Sweden) where she developed a project on photoswitchable kinase inhibitors to be used as chemical probes.


Ricardo J. Ferreira

Ricardo J. Ferreira

Ricardo Ferreira is a PhD student with an FCT (Portuguese Science Foundation) scholarship. Presently Ricardo is writing his PhD thesis dedicated to the study of the structural and functional interaction of mouse P-glycoprotein (P-gp/ABCB1)/lipid bilayer systems with substrates and efflux modulators through computational techniques (pharmacophore, 2 and 3-D QSAR, molecular dynamics, molecular docking and free-energy calculations) along with phytochemical isolation and characterization of new macrocyclic diterpenes from Euphorbia species (co-supervision with Prof. Maria-José U. Ferreira).

Presently Ricardo has a REQUIMTE BI fellowship to research on the ABCC transporters family in co-supervision with Prof. Natália Cordeiro.

Ricardo graduated in Pharmaceutical Sciences from the Faculty of Pharmacy of the University of Lisbon and also holds an M.Sc. degree in Pharmaceutical and Medicinal Chemistry by the same faculty. Then he had a project BI research fellowship to develop computational models that would provide additional insights on multidrug resistance mechanisms (co-supervision with Prof. Maria-José U. Ferreira).


Cátia A. Bonito

Cátia A. Bonito

Cátia Bonito started with a project BI research fellowship (co-supervision with Prof. Maria-José U. Ferreira) to study the P-glycoprotein transporter (P-gp/ABCB1). The goal is to get insights about substrate recognition and efflux mechanism mediated by the human P-gp using molecular dynamics simulations and molecular docking applied both to wild-type and single-point mutated structures known to change drug efflux selectivity. Presently Cátia pursues these studies with a REQUIMTE BI fellowship (co-supervision with Prof. Natália Cordeiro).

Cátia holds a master in Pharmaceutical Sciences and a master in Biopharmaceutical Sciences by the Faculty of Pharmacy of the University of Lisbon. Her master thesis covered the fields of experimental and computational Biochemistry, focused on the study of the Medium-chain acyl-CoA dehydrogenase deficiency, a rare metabolic disorder.


Michael Gonzàlez-Duruthy

Michael Gonzàlez-Duruthy

Michael González-Durruthy graduated in Pharmaceutical Sciences from the Institute of Pharmacy and Food of the University of Havana, Cuba (UH) and holds also an M.Sc. degree in Experimental Toxicology from the cited institution. Later, he moved to the Institute of Biological Sciences (ICB) of the Federal University of Rio Grande-RS (Brazil) with a PhD Fellowship from the Post-Graduate Student Agreement Program (PEC-PG/CAPES/MES), where earned a PhD in Physiological Sciences working on mitochondria nanotoxicology and mitotarget drug discovery. Finishing his PhD, he moved to the Faculty Sciences of University of Porto (FCUP) with a Postdoctoral Fellow in Computational Nanotoxicology financed by the NORTE-01-0145-FEDER-000011 (LAQV@REQUIMTE), and the Interreg SUDOE NanoDesk (SOE1/P1/E0215; UP). M. González-Durruthy has experience in modeling mitochondrial precision medicine, mitochondrial pharmacology and in silico molecular target recognition.


Bruno Gonçalves

Bruno Gonçalves

Bruno Gonçalves holds a master’s degree in Pharmaceutical Sciences (2010) and a PhD in Pharmaceutical Chemistry (2016) from the Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Coimbra, Portugal, in collaboration (PhD) with the University of Barcelona, Spain. During his PhD project, Bruno was able to prepare and evaluate a series of new triterpenoid derivatives that exhibited enhanced anticancer activity and improved selectivity. After his PhD, Bruno worked as a scientific researcher at Chem4Pharma in the development of the project “Drugs2CAD – Treatment of Cancer and Alzheimer diseases: discovery of new drugs” (co-promoted project between Chem4Pharma and University of Coimbra). Within this project Bruno was involved in the development and biological evaluation of a library of new natural product derivatives, aiming to discover ground-breaking molecules that can be advanced into clinical trials.

Presently Bruno Gonçalves is post-doc researcher that is developing a research project on multidrug resistance in cancer by refining a model of the ABCG2 transporter based on the recently published cryo-EM structures of human ABCG2, aiming to clarify key points of the mechanism— substrate recognition and ATP-driven transport and related conformational changes. His research interests include natural compounds, design, synthesis and biological evaluation of new antitumoral compounds, cancer molecular targets, multidrug resistance in cancer, computer-aided drug design and molecular dynamics.