INEB student, Liliana Pires, just finished her PhD

Liliana, a student at INEB, just finished her PhD in Biomedical Engineering from the Faculty of Engineering of University of Porto on 11 July 2014.

The PhD thesis title was “Bridging the Lesion - Engineering a Permissive Substrate Towards Nerve Regeneration”.

Injury to the spinal cord is marked by the disruption of ascending and descending axonal pathways, interrupting the communication between the brain and other parts of the body. The primary lesion, which essentially leads to cell death, is followed by a cascade of secondary events that include inflammation, activation of myelin associated-inhibitory pathways, and glutamate excitotoxicity. In this inhibitory environment regeneration fails to occur and the process ends up with the formation of a cavity delimited by a glial scar. Developing a therapeutic strategy to address a spinal cord lesion demands a multi-target approach that can counteract the inhibitory signalling process that is triggered upon injury and also bridge the interrupted connectivity. The main aim of this thesis was to design a scaffold that combines multiple cues to assist and enhance nerve regeneration in the context of the spinal cord, providing physical support, guidance and the delivery of therapeutic molecules constituting, ultimately, a permissive substrate for axonal regrowth.

Liliana's work was supervisored by Ana Paula Pêgo, INEB researcher and co-supervisored by Professor Luigi Ambrosio, ICBM – Institute of Composite and Biomedical Materials, University of Naples “Frederico II”, Italy.