Ariana Soares D. Portela

During my bachelor's degree at the University of Porto, I developed a project on the potential role of Transthyretin (TTR) in angiogenesis and the causes of the thickening of the basement membrane described in Alzheimer ́s Disease (AD), which brought me such fascination about age-related diseases. At Anglia Ruskin University for my MSc degree, I investigated the biological properties of novel nano disc carriers for delivery of toll-like receptor 4 (TLR-4) modulators as a novel strategy for macrophage-based immunotherapy. After that I worked for 2 years as an Associate Researcher at Icahn School of Medicine in New York, where I tested a novel drug inhibitor of NLRP3 inflammasome as a treatment for the rapid development of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) symptoms and mortality.

Since a very young age, I have wanted to be an astronaut. I looked at the sky and wondered what was going on out there. As I started getting older, I started wondering what was going on around here, on Earth. I became fascinated with the microscopic world of a cell, the mechanisms behind every organelle decision and what triggers certain responses that lead to age-related multimorbidity. My PhD project is a merge of my young and adult dreams and aspirations as it aims to identify the processes affecting ageing at a cellular and molecular level both on Earth and in Space, through collaborating with NASA/International Space Station in the UK ́s first-ever Space Innovation lab lead by Dr.Ghada Alsaleh, developing 3D models such as Organoids to study ageing mechanisms and identifying new drug candidates for therapeutic strategies targeting autophagy expression and clearance of senescent cells. This multidisciplinary approach will potentially identify a new drug that will address different age-associated diseases linked to autophagic decline as well as possibly uncovering a new model of aging.