A new PhD in our lab

On 22nd April 2024, our former PhD student in Biomedicine, Patrícia Correia, successfully defended her PhD thesis entitled ‘New Molecular Targets and Signaling Pathways for Spinal Cord Injury Therapeutics’. The event took place at the University of Aveiro, and the jury was composed by Dr. Mónica Sousa, Dr. Veronica Estrada, Dr. Víctor Carriel Araya and Dr. Miguel Pais Vieira.

For the past 4 years, Patrícia has been working on the identification of new genetic targets and signaling pathways associated with neuroregeneration after injury, with the supervision of our PI, Dr. Sandra Vieira, and Dr. Frank Bosse, from the Heinrich-Heine University in Dusseldorf, Germany.

Congratulations, Dr. Patrícia! All the best for your future!

New publication in Small Science

Our latest article reviewing the research trends and applicability of magnetic stimulation therapeutic approaches for musculoskeleton diseases has been published in Small Science.

You can find the full-text version here:

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/smsc.202300303

José G. S. Figueiredo; Bárbara M. de Sousa; Marco P. Soares dos Santos; Sandra I. Vieira. "Gathering Evidence to Leverage Musculoskeletal Magnetic Stimulation Towards Clinical Applicability". Small Science (2024). Doi:10.1002/smsc.202300303

Two new PhD scholarships funded

Two members of the Spark Lab team – Bruna Cruz and José Gabriel Figueiredo - have been granted a scholarship from the ‘2023 Call for PhD Studentships’ funded by the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT).

Bruna’s workplan focuses on the characterization of new candidate neuroregenerative targets for the treatment of spinal cord injuries (SCIs). Leveraging the promising results from our previous FCT-funded GoBack project, the goal is to identify early-regulated genes able to trigger robust neuroregenerative programs and assess their potential for clinical translation. Bruna’s PhD research work will be mainly conducted at the Institute of Biomedicine (iBiMED) of the University of Aveiro, supervised by Dr. Sandra Vieira (Spark Lab’s PI) and co-supervised by Dr. Frank Bosse from Heinrich-Heine University (Dusseldorf, Germany) and Dr. Stephane Belin from the Grenoble Institute of Neurosciences (GIN, France). Ref: 2023.03623.BD

José Gabriel’s thesis will address the characterization of brain information transfer dynamics and neurorehabilitation effects of a brain-machine interface (BMI) intervention in SCI patients. It is intended to monitor the cortical activity of healthy and SCI participants subjected to a BMI protocol - consisting on the control of an avatar through motor imagery in an immersive virtual reality environment - and assess the eventual occurrence of neuroplasticity, relating these measurements with SCI-related markers and clinical evolution. This work will be jointly supervised by Dr. Miguel Santos Pais Vieira (iBiMED, University of Aveiro) and Dr. Sandra Vieira. Ref: 2023.02051.BD

Congratulations, Bruna and José Gabriel!