Rita Fior, PhD

Rita Fior is a Developmental Biologist, fascinated by how cells interact with each other, to deliver instructions, to collaborate, to compete or synchronize their actions. From studying chick neurogenesis and Notch signaling during her PhD, she then moved on to study zebrafish somitogenesis in her Post-Doc. Throughout her career Fior was always interested in the transcriptional networks and cellular interactions that lead to differentiation and stem cell maintenance. By the end of her Post–Doc under the supervision of Leonor Saúde (iMM, PT) and Julian Lewis (FRS, CRUK), she became interested in cancer. This change in her scientific interest started with the awareness that there are several equivalent chemotherapy options, but no available test to determine the best therapy for each individual patient.

With this goal, Fior optimized and challenged the zebrafish larvae xenograft model to test if it could reveal inter- and intra-tumor heterogeneity and differential response to therapy (Fior et al, 2017, PNAS). A groundwork to develop zebrafish patient derived xenografts (zPDX) or zAvatars for personalized medicine. The Fior Lab is actively testing the predictive power of these larval zAvatars in colorectal and breast cancer, with very promising results (Costa, Ferreira et al, 2020, EBiomedicine, Rebelo Almeida et al, 2020 Comm Biology, Varanda et al, 2020, Cancers). 

In parallel, the Lab is investigating the cellular and molecular interactions that occur between human tumor cells and zebrafish innate immunity to discover new mechanisms of innate immune evasion (Póvoa et al 2021, Nature Comm). 

Her work is being recognized since her PhD with several prizes and honorable mentions such as Genetics of The Year (Genetics Society),BioMED Central Research award, Crioestaminal and BIAL Clinical Medicine.

Rita has also extensive experience in teaching in several Master and PhD programs and was author and co-editor of a textbook in Molecular and Cell Biology of Cancer, Springer (Fior and Zilhão, 2019).