About
a researcher in the field of neurodegenerative diseases, focusing on the molecular mechanisms that regulate neuronal dysfunction and aggregation in Machado-Joseph Disease/SpinoCerebellar Aataxia type 3. She holds a B.Sc. in Biochemistry from the University of Porto, Portugal,received a Msc. in Molecular Genetics (2007) and a PhD in Health Sciences fromthe University of Minho, Portugal (2011). She is currently conducting a postdoctoral research in the Neuroscience Research Domain with Professor Patrícia Maciel at School of Health Sciences, University of Minho in cooperation with Professor Rick Morimoto from the Northwestern University, Department of Molecular Biosciences. During her graduated studies, Andreia has established a C. elegans model for the study of MJD/SCA3 pathogenesis and identified a number of modifier genes, namely aging-related genes that stalled disease progression. More recently, she has been dedicated to the identification of small molecules that ameliorate mutant ataxin-3-meadiated neuronal dysfunction in C. elegans, and therefore may be useful for therapy development.
Pathogenesis and Therapeutics of Machado-Joseph disease
Teixeira-Castro A, Ailion M, Jalles A, Brignull HR, Vilaça JL, Dias N, Rodrigues P, Oliveira JF, Neves-Carvalho A, Morimoto RI, Maciel P. Neuron-specific proteotoxicity of mutant ataxin-3 in C. elegans: rescue by the DAF-16 and HSF-1 pathways. Hum Mol Genet. 2011 Aug 1;20(15):2996-3009. doi: 10.1093/hmg/ddr203. Epub 2011 May 5.
Ferro A1, Carvalho AL, Teixeira-Castro A, Almeida C, Tomé RJ, Cortes L, Rodrigues AJ, Logarinho E, Sequeiros J, Macedo-Ribeiro S, Maciel P. NEDD8: a new ataxin-3 interactor. Biochim Biophys Acta. 2007 Nov;1773(11):1619-27. Epub 2007 Aug 24.
Rodrigues AJ, Neves-Carvalho A, Teixeira-Castro A, Rokka A, Corthals G, Logarinho E, Maciel P. Absence of ataxin-3 leads to enhanced stress response in C. elegans. PLoS One. 2011 Apr 19;6(4):e18512. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0018512.
Esteves S, Duarte-Silva S, Neves-Carvalho A, Teixeira-Castro A, Oliveira P, Silva-Fernandes A, Maciel P. Limited effect of chronic valproic acid treatment in a mouse model of Machado-Joseph disease. PLOS One, 10(10):e0141610 (2015)
Ribeiro-Samy S, Silva NA, Correlo VM, Fraga JS, Pinto L, Teixeira-Castro AC, Leite-Almeida H, Almeida A, Gimble JM, Sousa N, Salgado AJ, Reis RL. Development and Characterization of PHB-HV based 3D Scaffolds for a Tissue Engineering and Cell-Therapy Combinatorial Approach for Spinal Cord Injury Regeneration. Macromolecular Biosience, (2013), in press
