David Carrageta, student of the Doctoral Program in Biomedical Sciences at ICBAS and researcher at UMIB – Multidisciplinary Unit for Biomedical Research, was recently awarded a scholarship financed by the Luso-American Foundation for Development (FLAD).

This support will allow the ICBAS student to develop, for six months, experimental work at the Houston Lee Moffitt Cancer Center & Research Institute, located in Tampa, Florida (USA), under the guidance of Ana P. Gomes, principal investigator of the Department of Molecular Oncology of the said institute.

The project entitled “aDvIsE – Diabetes induced signatures in sperm epigenetics” has as its main focus the study of metabolic and mitochondrial changes associated with metabolic diseases, such as diabetes, in human sperm.

For David Carrageta, this internship will allow “to learn advanced techniques of genetic manipulation, which will contribute to the development of my current doctoral project and to my future as a researcher. I will be joining a project and an excellent team, belonging to one of the best cancer research centers in the world”.

The project is supervised by Marco Alves, Assistant Researcher at UMIB-ICBAS, and co-supervised by Pedro Fontes Oliveira, Assistant Professor at the Department of Chemistry at the University of Aveiro, and also by ICBAS full professor, Mariana Monteiro, also Principal Investigator. of the “Endocrine and Metabolic Research” group and General Coordinator of UMIB.

About David Carragetta
Attending the Doctoral Program in Biomedical Sciences at ICBAS since 2019, David Carrageta has a degree (2015) and a master’s degree (2017) in Biomedical Sciences from the University of Beira Interior.

His research interests include the bioenergetics and mitochondrial activity during human sperm capacitation. He has advanced training in 1H-NMR focused on metabolomics.

Since 2018, he has published 19 articles in international peer-reviewed journals, three book chapters, and has received 13 research awards. In 2021, he won the Charneco da Costa Scholarship from the Portuguese Society of Diabetology (SPD), aimed at innovative projects in the area of fundamental research in Diabetology, taking place in Portugal.