João Nuno Moreira received his B.Sc. in Pharmaceutical of Sciences, M.Sc. in Cellular Biology and Ph.D. in Pharmaceutical Technology from the University of Coimbra. During his Ph.D. studies has spent three years at the Laboratory of Terry Allen, Department of Pharmacology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada.

 

At present, he is Assistant Professor with Habilitation ("Agregação") at the Faculty of Pharmacy and Principal Investigator at the Department of Vectors and Gene Therapy, Center for Neuroscience and Cell Biology, University of Coimbra.

 

Scientific activity is focused on the design of lipid-based nanosystems for drug and nucleic acid targeted delivery, addressing the impact on the tumor microenvironment, both at the cellular and molecular level. Scientific competences include formulation and characterization of lipid nanovesicles, in vitro mechanistic studies, in vitro cytotoxicity, biodistribution, and therapeutic testing in animal models of human disease. Has experience in coordination of funded research projects as principal investigator and participates as co-investigator in several funded research projects, within academia as well as in collaboration with pharmaceutical industry. Over the years has supervised Ph. D. students, Master students, Research Fellows or undergraduate students.

 

As a member of the MIT-Portugal program, has lectured at MIT on the course on Principles and Pratice in Drug Development (2010 - 2013). 

 

He is author/co-author of several scientific publications, which include papers published in peer-reviewed journals, 3 book chapters, 3 patents (two of them have been granted in US - U.S. Patents No. 8,231,895 and 8,529,944), oral communications and posters presented in scientific meetings.

 

As co-author of the work entitled Development of liposomes with affinity to ischemic myocardium, received the Bial Award 2004 (Honourable Mention) promoted by the Bial Foundation (Portugal). As co-author of the project Smart Medicines, he was awarded with the InovCapital prize for the best business idea, in the “Arrisca Coimbra 2009” contest, organized by the University of Coimbra. The same project was awarded with the 2nd place in the “Idea to Product (I2P)” contest, an early-stage technology commercialization plan competition organized by COTEC (Porto, 2010).

 

Has been collaborating with national (Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology - FCT) and international funding agencies. Member of the Portuguese Comission for the Evaluation of Medicines (INFARMED, since 2010)