Scientific Advisors

José Luís Almeida is a specialist in Clinical Pharmacology and Fellow of the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Medicine (FFPM) of the UK Royal Colleges of Physicians. He has more than 25 years of experience in drug development at an international level. He was Head of Clinical Research at Bial and has a wide expertise in pharmacosurveillance and clinical trials. Top responsibility for the clinical development of several new drugs. Supervision of more than 100 clinical trials involving hundreds of sites distributed by 35 countries. Invited Associate Professor and Director of the Masters Course in Pharmaceutical Medicine at University of Aveiro until 2015 and current Affiliate Professor of the Faculty of Medicine of Porto, Portugal. MD and PhD in Medicine from the University of Porto. CEO of Luzitin, SA.

Amílcar Falcão is Full Professor at the Faculty of Pharmacy from the University of Coimbra and Vice-Dean at the same University. He has an extensive expertise in the fields of Pharmacology/Pharmacometry and Biostatistics and Bioinformatics.

João Nuno Moreira received his B.Sc. in Pharmaceutical of Sciences, M.Sc. in Cellular Biology and Ph.D. in Pharmaceutical Technology from the University of Coimbra. During his Ph. D. studies has spent three years at the Department of Pharmacology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada. At present, he is an Assistant Professor with Habilitation at the Faculty of Pharmacy and Principal Investigator at the Department of Vectors and Gene Therapy, Center for Neuroscience and Cell Biology, University of Coimbra. Scientific activity is focused on the design of lipid-based nanosystems for drug and nucleic acid targeted delivery, namely towards cancer. Scientific competences include formulation and characterization of lipid nanovesicles, in vitro mechanistic studies, in vitro cytotoxicity, biodistribution, and therapeutic testing in animal models of human disease. Has experience in coordination of funded research projects as principal investigator and participates as co-investigator in several funded research projects, within academia as well as in collaboration with pharmaceutical industry. Over the years has supervised PhD students, Master students, Research Fellows or undergraduate students. As a member of the MIT-Portugal program, has lectured at MIT on the course on Principles and Practice in Drug Development (2010 – 2013). Has also been collaborating with national (Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology – FCT) and international funding agencies (from Holland, France and Italy). Member of the Portuguese Commission for the Evaluation of Medicines (INFARMED, since 2010). He is author/co-author of several scientific publications, which include papers published in peer-reviewed journals, three book chapters, three US patents (granted), two PCTs (under evaluation), oral communications or posters presented in scientific meetings. As co-author of the work entitled Development of liposomes with affinity to ischemic myocardium, received the Bial Award 2004 (Honorable Mention) promoted by the Bial Foundation (Portugal). As co-author of the project Smart Medicines, he was awarded with the InovCapital prize for the best business idea, in the “Arrisca Coimbra 2009” contest, organized by the University of Coimbra. The same project was awarded with the 2nd place in the “Idea to Product (I2P)” contest, an early-stage technology commercialization plan competition organized by COTEC (Porto, 2010).