Mariana Viegas

Prior to joining the Gene Medicine Research Group, I completed a Bachelor’s Degree in Biology from the Faculty of Sciences, University of Lisbon (https://ciencias.ulisboa.pt/en) and a Master’s Degree in Molecular Genetics and Biomedicine from the Faculty of Sciences and Technology, NOVA University of Lisbon (https://www.fct.unl.pt/en). As part of my Master’s Degree and under the ERASMUS+ Exchange Programme, I worked for a year under the supervision of Prof. Frank Kozielski (in the School of Pharmacy, University College London) on structure-based drug-design, with focus on protein purification and crystallization.

My current work is funded by The Welcome Trust and relates to the development of novel therapies for a portfolio of lung diseases via lentiviral vector gene delivery. Cells in the lung can be targeted by pseudotyping the lentivirus vectors with the Sendai virus’ envelope proteins, F and HN. This allows an efficient delivery of functional disease-related gene copies to the lung.