THESIS DEFENSE: At the Embryo’s Heart: Looking for cardiac repair/regenerative potential

INEB PhD student Mariana Valente defended her thesis on February 22nd 2016 at Instituto de Ciências Biomédicas Abel Salazar - Universidade do Porto (ICBAS-UP). The thesis is entitled "At the Embryo’s Heart: Looking for cardiac repair/regenerative potential" and it was developed in the area of Biomedical Sciences.

Mariana's research was supervised by Perpétua Pinto-do-Ó (Assistant Researcher at i3S/INEB and Adjunct Professor at ICBAS-UP) and Ana Cumano (Head of Research INSERM at Institut Pasteur).

The work developed in this Doctoral Thesis contributed with new surface signatures to discriminate main embryonic mouse cardiac cells-types and progenitors-subsets, as well their potential hierarchical relationships; new methodology, i.e. MIQuant software, for the standardized evaluation of experimentally induced myocardial infarction (MI) thus allowing exact comparisons amongst laboratories; and finally, new insights about the reactivation of the “fetal program” in diseased heart settings.