Pharmaceutics Webinar | Where Are We Now and Where Is Antimicrobial Therapy Headed?
the chair
3rd Pharmaceutics Webinar
Where Are We Now and Where Is Antimicrobial Therapy Headed?
Dear Colleagues,
With much joy and enthusiasm, I welcome each of you to this webinar! As Chair, I am pleased to see the convergence of research aimed at understanding "Where Are We Now and Where Is Antimicrobial Therapy Headed?"
Antimicrobial resistance poses more concerns today than ever before. Our collaborative efforts, insights, and inventions are critical to navigating this difficult world. This meeting provides an opportunity for us to exchange ideas, examine breakthroughs, and plot a course for a future in which effective antimicrobial therapy remains a cornerstone of modern medicine.
Our schedule for this webinar is packed with interesting talks, from antimicrobial dendrimer and lipid nanoparticles to the regulation of biofilms by RNA. I encourage all of you to actively engage in the sessions, contribute your views, and take advantage of the opportunity to network with our panel of experts and other researchers.
Again, welcome to this webinar!
Fábio Fernandes
Date: 24 April 2024 at 10.00 a.m. CEST | 4:00 a.m. EDT | 4:00 p.m. CST Asia
Webinar ID: 841 5162 0647
Webinar Secretariat: journal.webinar@mdpi.com
Meet the Event Chair
Meet Our Speakers
Dr. Sandra Pinto
Institute for Bioengineering and Biosciences (IBB) and Associate Laboratory - Institute for Health and Bioeconomy (i4HB), Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa, Av. Rovisco Pais, 1049-001 Lisboa, Portugal;
Dr. Sandra Pinto (ORCID 0000-0002-3205-9459) has a PhD in Chemistry. She is an Assistant Researcher at iBB. Her research is mostly focused on medicinal chemistry, biophysics, and microbiology. In the last five years, she has been focused on the development of microscopy methodologies to characterize microbial biofilms and on innovative therapies for drug-resistant infectious diseases. Through this work, she and other collaborators identified core–shell polycationic polyurea dendrimers as new synthetic mimics of antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) with outstanding broad-spectrum antimicrobial activity. These nanoparticles were tolerated well by human cells and showed sub-μM activity against multi-drug-resistant bacteria in their planktonic form. This work recently lead to several oral presentations, publications in high-impact journals, and the publication of national and international patents.
Dr. Maria Manuela Gaspar
Research Institute for Medicines (iMed.ULisboa), Faculty of Pharmacy, Universidade de Lisboa, Av. Prof. Gama Pinto, 1649-003 Lisboa, Portugal;
Dr Maria Manuela Gaspar (ORCID 0000-0001-6814-7226) completed her PhD in 2005 in Pharmacy, Pharmaceutical Technology at the University of Lisbon, Portugal, and in 2007/2008 completed her post-doctoral studies at Trinity College, University of Dublin, Ireland. She is a Researcher at the Research Institute for Medicines in the Faculty of Pharmacy, Universidade de Lisboa. Her area of research includes the design, characterization, and in vitro evaluation of appropriated delivery systems, of a lipid or polymeric nature, loaded with already commercialized or newly synthesized antibiotics. She is also interested in the establishment of infectious and cancer murine models, such as M. avium, M. tuberculosis, leishmania, MRSA, melanoma, and colon cancer, for validating the therapeutic effect of developed lipid-based systems. She is the co-author of numerous patents, papers in peer-reviewed journals, and book chapters.
SCOPUS ID 15834627800 | CIÊNCIA ID 3A10-0732-13F5
Dr. Vasco Bonifácio
Institute for Bioengineering and Biosciences (IBB) and Associate Laboratory - Institute for Health and Bioeconomy (i4HB), Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa, Av. Rovisco Pais, 1049-001 Lisboa, Portugal;
Dr Vasco Bonifácio (ORCID 0000-0003-2349-8473) is a Professor of Biomaterials and Scientific Coordinator of the Master in Pharmaceutical Technology at IST. He obtained his PhD in Organic Chemistry from FCT-UNL and post-doc in Molecular Electronics from Institüt fur Polymertechnologie (Germany). He was a Visiting Scientist at MIT (USA) and the University of Bordeaux (France). Also, he was a Visiting Professor at Faculdad de Medicina, University Castilla-La Mancha (Spain) and the Fraunhofer Institute for Silicate Research (Germany).
Dr Vasco Bonifácio was awarded the Advanced Materials Scientist Medal (2017), the Multiple Myeloma Award (2019), and the RETSCH Scientific Challenge – Enabling progress with ball mils (2024). He was awarded the Outstanding Teaching Award six times at IST.
Additionally, he is the President of the Lisbon Delegation of the Portuguese Chemical Society. He is a member of the Editorial Board of Frontiers Nanobiotechnology (Frontiers), QUÍMICA (Portuguese Chemical Society), and is a Guest Editor at MDPI. In 2023, he was listed in the top 2% most cited scientists in the world, a ranking elaborated by the Sandford University. More at www.bonifacio.ws.
Dr. Vânia Pobre
Instituto de Tecnologia Química e Biológica António Xavier, Universidade Nova de Lisboa (ITQB NOVA), Avenida da República 2780-901, Oeiras, Portugal.;
Dr. Vânia Pobre (ORCID 0000-0002-4339-8472) has a PhD in Molecular Biology. She is currently a senior researcher at ITQB NOVA in the Control of Gene Expression Group. During her postdoctoral work, she has dedicated most of her efforts to the field of RNA bioinformatics with a strong focus on transcriptomics and big data analysis. She has applied the advantage of her dual knowledge of being both an experimental and a computational biologist to study the roles of exoribonucleases and small non-coding RNAs in the control of gene expression. She has supervised the work of Masters and PhD students as well as other internships in the lab. She also taught classes in the MolBioS PhD program and in the Medical Microbiology Master programs at ITQB NOVA since 2012. She has also participated in teaching in ERASMUS programs abroad. She also established several national and international collaborations that have allowed her to expand her field of knowledge. In 2021, she was also elected as the representative of the ITQB NOVA biology division for the ITQB/iBET postdoctoral association (PDA). Since 2022 she has also been part of Bioda.pt (Portuguese ELIXIR node).
Sponsors and Partners
Organizer
The Pharmaceutics Webinar "Where Are We Now and Where Is Antimicrobial Therapy Headed" took place on 24th April 2024. This event was chaired by Dr. Fábio Fernandes from the Instituto Superior Técnico (IST) in Lisbon. The invited speakers were as follows: Dr. Sandra Pinto from the Institute for Bioengineering and Biosciences (iBB-Lisbon), who introduced the topic of the webinar; Dr. Maria Manuela Gaspar, from the Faculty of Pharmacy in Lisbon, who presented results on the use of long blood-circulating liposomes for the cell delivery of rifabutin; Dr. Vasco Bonifácio from the IST (Lisbon), who presented results on novel dendrimer formulations with antimicrobial activity; and Dr. Vânia Pobre from ITQB-NOVA (Oeiras), who presented work on the indentification of new sRNA from Pseudomonas aeruginosa. At the end of the webinar, a live discussion with all presenters took place, in which the questions of the audience were answered.
The webinar was hosted via Zoom and required registration to attend. The full recording can be accessed below. In order to learn about future webinars, you can sign up for our newsletter by clicking “Subscribe” at the top of the page.
Where Are We Now and Where Is Antimicrobial Therapy Headed?
Guest Editor: Dr. Sandra N. Pinto
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 20 June 2024