Retina4Future - COST Action CA24105

Short Bio: Ana Raquel Sarabando Santiago (Ana Raquel Santiago, ARS) is Assistant Professor (area of Immunology) at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Coimbra (FMUC) and a researcher at the Coimbra Institute for Clinical and Biomedical Research (iCBR) of FMUC and at Centre for Innovative Biomedicine and Biotechnology. She is a member of the Board of the Portuguese Glial Network and of the Core Team of GreenLab@CiBB. She is the Coordinator of the Animal Facility in FMUC and the President of the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee of iCBR-FMUC. She is also a collaborator at the Association for Innovation and Biomedical Research on Light (AIBILI). ARS is a Biochemist with a PhD in Cell Biology (2008), with part of the experimental work performed at Penn State College of Medicine (USA) and Institute for Neurosciences and Amsterdam Medical Center (The Netherlands). During her PhD, ARS studied the mechanisms by which glutamate excitotoxicity contributes to retinal neurodegeneration in the early stages of diabetic retinopathy, the leading complication of diabetes. As a post-doctoral FCT fellow, she joined iCBR and started a new line of research on the study of neuroinflammation and neuroprotection in glaucoma, a leading cause of vision loss worldwide. As a post-doc, she also worked at the laboratories of Elena Vecino (Basque Country University, Spain) and David Calkins (Vanderbilt Eye Institute, USA). Currently, ARS has been interested in the contribution of glial cells and neuroinflammation to retinal neurodegeneration, and the identification of therapeutic strategies for retinal diseases targeting neuroprotection and neuroinflammation control. She published 57 papers in internationals peer-reviewed journals, with an h-index of 30 and 2114 citations (as of February 22, 2025). ARS has participated in important and renowned national and international scientific meetings in the field of eye and vision research and neuroinflammation (17 oral communications by invitation). The work developed or coordinated by ARS has been presented in more than 170 poster presentations in scientific meetings. Raquel Santiago has attracted competitive funding from national and international agencies in highly competitive calls (8 projects as Principal Investigator, 20 as team member, and 2 projects as research fellow). She has organized several scientific meetings, including symposia in international meetings. She supervised 5 PhD students, 13 Msc students, 2 post-docs, and project fellows. She has been in the jury of Msc and PhD thesis, including as main opponent, and she has been actively collaborating with Doctoral and Master courses of FMUC. She is member of the editorial board of Cell Biology, Journal of Ophthalmology and Scientific Reports. She is Associate Editor in Frontiers in Pharmacology, Frontiers in Neuroscience and Frontiers in Cellular Neuroscience and she is/was guest editor of several special issues related with the contribution of microglia to neurodegeneration and with therapeutic strategies for retinal diseases. She has been acting as reviewer in several scientific journals and as project evaluator for the German Research Foundation, Dutch Research Council, UK Medical Research Council, among other funding agencies. ARS has also participated in several science communication activities including the World Sight Day, Brain Awareness week, European Researchers Night, as well as in other activities related with science dissemination to high school students. She is part of the Outreach Committee of Portuguese Glial Network.

Short Bio: I am a Senior Lecturer in Pharmaceutics and MPharm Programme Director at the University of Strathclyde (Glasgow, UK). I hold a PharmD from the University of Porto and a PhD in Drug Research and Development from the University of Santiago de Compostela. I worked as a PDRA at Queen’s University Belfast and as a Senior Lecturer at De Montfort University. My background spans formulation, drug delivery, nanomedicine, vaccine delivery and microneedles for transdermal delivery and diagnostics. My research group at Strathclyde - the 3Ds Lab (Drug Delivery and Diagnostics) - focuses on improving and facilitating patients' lives through the development of drug and vaccine delivery systems that are easy to manufacture and scale-up, highly efficient and administered through non-invasive routes.

Short Bio: I am a Coordinating Researcher/Full Professor at Faculty of Medicine, University of Coimbra, Portugal, and the Leader of Retinal Dysfunction and Neuroinflammation Lab. My main scientific interests are focused on retinal degenerative diseases (diabetic retinopathy, glaucoma, AMD and IRDs). I have been interested in elucidating the molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying retinal dysfunction/degeneration, paying particular attention to the role played by neuroinflammation mediated by microglial cells, cell-cell crosstalk, and neuroprotection. I have also been interested in identifying new drug targets and developing advanced therapies for retinal diseases, identifying novel biomarkers of disease, and drug repurposing. More recently, I became interested in understanding the impact of prior systemic infections on chronic retinal diseases occurring later in life.