Dr. Margarida Serra

Margarida Serra is the Head of Stem Cell Bioengineering Laboratory from the Animal Cell Technology Unit of iBET and Invited Assistant Professor at FCT-NOVA, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa.

 

She is graduated in Biological Engineering at the Instituto Superior Técnico, and holds a PhD in Engineering and Technology Sciences, from Universidade NOVA de Lisboa in 2011. She did part of her PhD studies at the Fraunhofer Institut for Biomedical Engineering (Germany), Cellartis AB (Sweden), and Uniklinik Köln (Germany). The work developed was innovative as for the first time a bioprocess to expand human embryonic stem cells in scalable and fully controlled bioreactors was developed. 

 

The key research line is driven by the vision to streamline robust manufacturing of cell therapy products with improved functionality, to support phase I/II clinical trials. At iBET, her research have been focused on the development of novel cell culturing strategies that recreate environmental conditions excelling growth and differentiation/maturation of human stem cells. Aiming at accelerating the translation of cell therapy products into the clinic, she has been applying multi-parametric techniques including omics technologies as complementary analytical tools to support bioprocess optimization and cell potency assessment. Margarida Serra has published over 41 papers, 2 book chapters and supervised 8 PhD students and 15 MSc students.