Mafalda Ramos de Matos

Mafalda Ramos de Matos holds a Master´s degree in Comparative and Technological Molecular Genetics, from UTAD where she also did her undergraduate in Genetics and Biotechnology. Her doctoral work at iMM Lisboa disclosed a novel link between epigenetic deregulation, genomic instability and intratumor heterogeneity that is prevalent in several cancers. Using computational biology approaches (namely Whole-exome sequencing) she found that mutations in epigenetic modifier genes are the stronger determinants of high intratumor heterogeneity in a particular kidney carcinoma. These findings have the potential to define new molecular targets for therapeutic interventions and to shape existing chemotherapeutic schemes used to treat cancer.

She was involved in a project which aims to depict IL-7/IL-7R signaling networks in Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ERC project). She was analysing next generation sequencing datasets (Proteomic, RNA-seq and Whole-exome sequencing) from a mouse model of IL-7R-mediated leukemia in order to: 1) identify new genes and functional pathways associated with IL-7/IL-7R signaling in leukemia and beyond; and 2) characterize the proteome, genome and transcriptome profile of IL7R-related mouse leukemias – and establish their similarities with human leukemia cases.