MARIANA LOBATO DE OLIVEIRA

My name is Mariana Oliveira and I am 31 years old. I became fascinated with biology having developed a great interest in science during high school. For this reason, I graduated in Cell and Molecular Biology at Universidade Nova de Lisboa. After that, and in order to explore more translational research with clinical implications for patients, I got my Master’s degree in Oncobiology at Universidade de Lisboa. My master thesis project aimed at understanding the prognostic significance of PI3K/Akt/mTOR and JAK/STAT5 signaling pathways in pediatric B-cell leukemia. As I wanted to continue to specialize in Cancer research and to proceed further in my studies, I found that the LisbonBioMed PhD program at Instituto de Medicina Molecular (iMM), in Lisbon, was perfect for my research interests and future goals. In fact, I decided to continue working in the leukemia field. Using zebrafish models, my PhD project aimed at characterizing the in vivo impact of aberrant IL-7R signaling in normal T-cell hematopoiesis and T-cell leukemia and also at evaluating how aberrant IL-7R-mediated signaling may influence the self-renewal capacity of leukemia cells within the primary T-ALL. I was able to publish one first author research article and two first author review articles that directly related to my project and I also co-authored several papers as side projects in which I was involved as well as a book chapter. I was also responsible for several students in the lab while doing my PhD project. In January 2021, and after I had finished all the bench work related to my PhD, I decided to embrace a new challenge and start working as a lab manager in the newly created Molecular Diagnostic Center by iMM, in Lisbon. I spent almost two years there until I realized I really want to proceed further in my research career and continue to specialize in Cancer research. Therefore, I decided to join Institut Curie and VAGNER's team to continue working in cancer and to learn more about the complex and puzzling signaling pathway networks partaking in cancer and how they impact its progression as well as response to therapy.