This congress reaffirmed the collaboration between the two countries in the research and treatment of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's, a condition with a higher incidence in aging societies like those of Spain and Portugal, and with a profound economic and social impact.

Host

Carlos Minnutti, Group Leader at Champalimaud Research

Venue

Seminar room

Host

Francesco Costantino, PhD Student, Champalimaud Research

Venue

Seminar room

The ERC Starting Grant is one of Europe’s most prestigious and competitive research awards, designed to support promising early-career researchers who have the potential to become leaders in their fields. Ianuş will receive €2M over the next five years to develop her research project at King’s College London, where she recently joined as a Lecturer in Healthcare Engineering.

Host

Carlos Minutti, Principal Investigator, Champalimaud Research 

Venue

Seminar room

How do we learn to make sense of our environment? Over time, our brain builds a hierarchy of knowledge, with higher-order concepts linked to the lower-order features that comprise them. For instance, we learn that cabinets contain drawers and that Dalmatian dogs have black-and-white patches, and not vice versa. This interconnected framework shapes our expectations and perception of the world, allowing us to identify what we see based on context and experience.

Using zebrafish “Avatars”, an animal model developed by the Cancer Development and Innate Immune Evasion lab at the Champalimaud Foundation (CF), led by Rita Fior, Mayra Martínez-López – a former PhD student at the lab now working at the Universidad de las Américas in Quito, Ecuador – and colleagues studied the initial steps of the Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG) vaccine’s action on bladder cancer cells.

Co-organised by Fundación CIEN, Fundación Reina Sofía, and the Champalimaud Foundation, this scientific congress aims to bring advances in research in the fight against Alzheimer's and other neurodegenerative diseases to the public, and above all, to raise awareness to advance the search for global solutions and responses due to their social consequences.