i3S researcher is granted one million euros by the US Department of Defense to study intestinal diseases

Researcher of the University of Porto, of the Health Research and Innovation Institute (i3S), Salomé Pinho was granted one million euros by the United States Department of Defense to study intestinal diseases, specifically inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) predictive and disease progression biomarkers and to develop new prevention strategies.

The project consists of the profiling of U.S. militaries who have developed the inflammatory bowel disease (Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis). The Portuguese researcher and her team will carry out sampling analysis up to six years before diagnosis of the disease.

"They (the militaries) carry out routine sampling, every year, and we will have access to serum samples at a preclinical phase, before the disease emerged, which is new", explained Salomé Pinho.

This is a three-year project and the main goal, in a first phase, is to characterize the US militaries samples by using sophisticated glycoproteomics technology, thus enabling to identify "molecular signatures", aka biomarkers associated with this disease.

The project is led by the Porto team and it is jointly carried out with researchers of the US Navy and experts in the IBD areas of the Mont Sinai Hospital, in New York.

"This will allow us to invest into 'state of art' equipment and in qualified staff resources", concludes Salomé Pinho, who is also an invited professor at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Porto (FMUP).