Oliveira has been awarded a six-year contract with C2TN to pursue his studies focused on cancer imaging and treatment.
After two postdocs in the UK and USA, and a CEEC fellowship at iMM, Bruno is returning “home” 12 years later, after completing his PhD at our research campus.
Bruno will develop the research project entitled “A molecular imaging approach for screening chemo-immunotherapeutics against PD-L1 expressing tumors” that will apply methods in chemical biology, molecular imaging, immunomodulation and targeted drug delivery to improve the efficacy of Protein-Drug Conjugates in oncology. In specific, Bruno will explore the use of de novo miniproteins designed by David Baker (WU, USA) as carriers to release toxic drugs and therapeutic isotopes in tumors. The use of miniproteins is expected to improve the efficacy of the current FDA approved treatments with Antibody-Drug Conjugates due to their better in vivo properties (higher affinity, stability, and tissue penetration and lower immunogenicity, among others).