Prof. Lino Ferreira
Faculty of Medicine
Pólo das Ciências da Saúde, Unidade Central
Azinhaga de Santa Comba
3000-354 Coimbra
Center for Neurosciences and Cell Biology
University of Coimbra
Largo Marques de Pombal
3004-517 Coimbra
Portugal
Plenary Lecture: Drug Delivery Systems for Tissue Regeneration and to Reverse Ageing
Lino Ferreira (LF) BSc, Ph.D. (Portuguese, M, 53 years old) is a Coordinator Researcher (equiv. to Full Professor) at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Coimbra and Vice-Director of the PT Government Associate Laboratory CIBB, University of Coimbra (Portugal). He is the associate editor of Biomaterials Science Journal (RSC), the founder of two technology-based companies, and the founder and current Director of the Collaborative Laboratory Colab4Ageing that currently integrates 6 associates (companies, academia, and innovation hubs). A key focus of his bioengineering laboratory is to develop platform technologies in the areas of biomaterials, drug delivery, and cell therapies to address unmet medical needs. The lab aims to investigate age-related diseases, particularly the ones related to the cardiovascular system, and to develop pharmacological interventions (including drug delivery systems) to attenuate the effects of aging. Lino Ferreira has been the ERA Chair holder in ageing at the UC since 2016 after a successful application to the European Widening program. He was the coordinator of a Twinning project in cell senescence called “Research for healthy ageing- RESETAgeing” (H2020-Twinn-2019; duration: 2021-2024) and he is now the coordinator of a pathfinder open project entitled “REGENERAR” (Ref: 101129812). His team is the first to be housed in a research infrastructure dedicated to ageing called MIA-Portugal, the first in South Europe. In the last 10 years, Lino Ferreira’s lab has made significant contributions at the interface of engineering with biology, in particular, in the development of tissue models for screening and aging modeling, in the evaluation of anti-senescence therapies in the context of aging and age-related diseases, and advanced nanoformulations for medical applications. As a result of his proficiency, he has published more than 170 scientific contributions in scientific journals with the referee and filled more than 25 International patents. He has an h-index of 63 and received so far ~ 15,500 citations. He has successfully supervised 27 PhD students and 26 post-docs. He was the recipient of numerous awards/prizes including the Crioestaminal prize (2008), the ERC consolidator grant (2012), the FCT Investigator award (2013 and 2015), the Bluepharma Innovation award (2016), ERA Chair award (2016), among others. He was President of the Portuguese Society of Stem Cells and Cell Therapies (2013-2015). Members of his group have founded companies (e.g. Tissium, Exogenus Therapeutics, Matera, Curemat) that attracted more than $250M in venture capital. He has been listed in the World TOP2% (Career) most cited researchers since 2020.
