Nathalia Almeida dos Santos
Academic and Work Experience Prior to Sept 2019 Programme Start
For my bachelor’s degree, I completed the course of Biomedical Sciences at the Federal University of São Paulo. In the third year of this course, I was awarded a scholarship from the Brazilian government to complete an exchange year at the University of Sheffield.
When returning, I completed my bachelor thesis with Prof Patricia Beltrão Braga, in which I developed a 3D model of the developing brain using iPSC-derived neural progenitor cells. To carry on with my interest in neuroscience, I was thrilled to receive the Goethe Goes Global scholarship to complete a master’s degree in Interdisciplinary Neuroscience at the Goethe University of Frankfurt.
My master thesis with Dr Julia Ladewig involved optimising protocols to derive forebrain organoids from iPSCs.
PhD Programme – Year 1 – MRes and Project Rotations
For my rotations, I wanted to branch out from neuroscience and learn more about stem cells in different contexts.
In Dr Rocio Sancho’s lab I experimented with the culture conditions of pancreas organoids protocols, and validate interactors playing a role during endocrine differentiation;
I joined Prof Michael Malim to define how the HIV-1 life cycle changes in iPSC lines coming from different donors showing extreme infection phenotypes, and to establish a protocol to generate iPSC-derived macrophages.
Finally for the third rotation, I joined Dr Joana Neves. We had initially planned to establish a protocol to obtain innervated human intestinal organoids to tackle whether Parkinson’s disease can be initiated in the gut. However, due to Covid-19 UK lockdown, we instead wrote a grant to obtain funding for this project, which was submitted to the Royal Society research grant scheme, and analysed previous data from the lab using Ingenuity Pathway Analysis (IPA) to understand α-Synuclein overexpression in mouse small intestinal organoids co-cultured with innate lymphoid cells.
PhD Programme – Years 2 to 4 – Doctoral Studies
For my PhD project, I have chosen to join the Malim lab. I was drawn to this project because the influence of host genetic factors upon HIV-1 infection is still not fully elucidated. Since the virus relies on the host cell machinery and proteins to replicate, host genetics are a key determinant not only of the proteins expressed but also of their functional capabilities – which will thus dictate the outcome of virus infection.
My research will then link the natural occurring genetic variation found in the human population with the inherent variability in the capacity of cells from different individuals to support HIV-1 growth. I will work with well characterised iPSCs from the HipSci bank to obtain macrophages, which are natural targets of HIV-1 infection. I will then characterise how the virus infects and replicates in macrophages, and employ a bespoke bioinformatics pipeline to compare the genome sequences and transcriptomes of cells showing extreme infection phenotypes.
With this approach, I hope to identify novel host factors that can regulate viral replication and that my results will add new insights into the understanding of HIV-1 infection and disease (AIDS) and suggest avenues to be explored as potential novel therapeutic strategies to treat and control HIV-1.
