Flavia Barbosa PhD

Dr. Flavia Leao Barbosa is a scientist at Virscio. Over the past 20 years, She has continued to build a more thorough understanding of the biology of the cornea, its immune system, and adjacent tissues. In conjunction with this experience, she has gained considerable expertise in qPCR, ELISA, in vivo and in vitro models, as well as confocal, electron, and scanning microscopy. She received her PhD in 2009 in Visual Sciences from the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil. She was then given the opportunity to come to the United States and pursue her first post-doctoral fellowship at the Cole Eye Institute in Cleveland, Ohio in 2009. She then conducted a second post-doctoral fellowship at the Baylor College of Medicine in 2013, where she studied the function of goblet cell (GC) mucin trapping and conventional dendritic cell (cDC) uptake of antigens on the ocular surface during homeostatic conditions. The information gained from these studies was fundamental in understanding the role of GC-produced mucins in maintaining immune homeostasis. During my fellowship at Baylor, She was also involved in several projects studying the pathogenesis of dry eye disease; notably how dendritic cells participate in ocular surface immune responses. With over 600 citations, She has published in several peer-reviewed journals. Over the course of my post-doctoral training, I collaborated on several projects with industry partners to evaluate therapeutic agents for ocular surface diseases. Dr. Barbosa has meaningfully expanded on her translational research experience and expertise since joining Virscio, participating in and guiding multiple industry-funded therapeutic development programs.