What if it were possible to take a tour on brain tumors and find answers in the treatment of this disease?

Cláudia Faria, our Professor, pediatric neurosurgeon at the Centro Hospitalar Lisboa Norte, EPE and researcher at the Instituto de Medicina Molecular was distinguished with an honorable mention in the Bial Award for Clinical Medicine 2022, precisely for having found a way to take a 360º look at tumors.
The BTTarget platform - Brain Tumor Target - works as a bank with about two thousand samples of tumors, testing models of the disease itself and with the goal of creating new lines of treatment, in the form of clinical trials.
To Professor Cláudia Faria our very proud congratulations for the distinction and for consecrating in herself the true example of what our Lisbon Academic Medicine Center - CAML - is.

About the impact that this work may have for the future, Cláudia Faria said that "for medicine to advance, we need to know in depth the diseases we treat. By studying brain tumors in detail, developing models of the disease very similar to human beings, we can find prognostic markers or identify new treatments. These findings can then be validated in clinical trials in patients, helping to improve their survival and quality of life.

Also referring to this last night awards, Melo Cristino, Professor of Microbiology Director of the Clinical Pathology Service of the CHULN was appointed president of the jury of the next Bial Award for Clinical Research, replacing Prof. Sobrinho Simões.

Cláudia Faria graduated in Medicine from the Faculty of Medicine, University of Coimbra in 2001 and did her residency in Neurosurgery at the Neurosurgery Service of Santa Maria Hospital (Centro Hospitalar Universitário Lisboa Norte, CHULN) between 2004 and 2010, under the guidance of Professor João Lobo Antunes. She specialized in Pediatric Neurosurgery and in the molecular biology of pediatric brain tumors. She developed her PhD project with Professor James Rutka at the Labatt Brain Tumour Research Centre, Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, Canada, where for 3 years she studied the mechanisms that lead to the development of medulloblastoma, the most common malignant brain tumor in children. Using the molecular characteristics of the various subgroups of medulloblastoma she identified and validated drugs capable of treating the most aggressive forms of the disease.

In 2014 she returned to the Lisbon Academic Medicine Center where she is currently a researcher, dividing her time between her activity as a Neurosurgeon at the Santa Maria Hospital (CHULN), as a Researcher at the João Lobo Antunes Institute of Molecular Medicine (iMM) and as Guest Assistant Professor of Neurosurgery and Neurology at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Lisbon (FMUL).

Cláudia Faria is co-Director of the Biobanco-iMM CAML, having founded the Brain Tumor Bank. She is also coordinator at the CHULN of the Pediatric Oncology Reference Center - Central Nervous System tumors in the Southern Region of the country, Chair of the Training and Formation Committee of the International Society of Pediatric Oncology (SIOP) Brain Tumor Group and Chair of the Board of National Directors of the European infrastructure network for translational medicine - EATRIS.

She was recently appointed Director of the FMUL Neurosurgery University Clinic.