Barbara Rocha MS, PhD

Barbara S. Rocha is an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Coimbra. She has a BSc in Pharmaceutical Sciences, an MSc degree in Medicine (University of Coimbra), and a PhD in Pharmaceutical Sciences (University of Coimbra). In collaboration with research groups at the University of La República (Uruguay) and the Karolinska Institute (Sweden), she studied the biochemical interactions of dietary polyphenols and nitrate in the murine and human stomach, establishing the proof of concept that phenols promote the non-enzymatic production of nitric oxide in the gastric environment upon a meal containing green vegetables.

Furthermore, she demonstrated that upon production in the gastric lumen, nitric oxide diffuses towards the gastric mucosa and induces smooth muscle relaxation, likely modulating the rate of gastric emptying. Then, Barbara Rocha studied post-translational modifications of gastric proteins by dietary nitrate and induced nitrite. She has shown that pepsin (gastric protease) is nitrated and inactivated by dietary nitrate in the stomach in vivo and that nitrated pepsin prevents the development of peptic ulcers.

Barbara later did a postdoc at the University of Coimbra where she investigated the impact of dietary nitrate on gut and systemic physiological mechanisms upon antibiotic therapy by modulating gut microbiota. Currently, she is studying the impact of antibiotics on gut microbiota and gastrointestinal welfare at the clinical level in collaboration with the Gastroenterology department of Coimbra University Hospital.

Barbara Rocha has been a team member of several FCT-funded projects and is a past member of EuroSurg, a European medical students and surgeons network that collaborates to run multicenter international studies. She has been awarded the Early Career Research Fellowship (2022) by the Society for Free Radical Research Europe/Oxygen Club of California (OCC) and the "Future of Redox Biology" award by OCC (2022). Barbara Rocha has supervised undergraduate and master's students and is currently co-supervising two PhD students and one master's student.