Jose Ferreira PhD

José Alexandre Ferreira graduated in Chemistry from the University of Aveiro in 2002 and completed an MSc in Food Chemistry in 2004, with a specialization in glycochemistry. In 2010 he obtained a PhD degree from the same university in collaboration with the University of Guelph in Ontario Canada. During his PhD, he identified several antigenic glycans from the gastric pathogen H. pylori, the main etiologic agent of gastric cancer. Some antigens are currently explored as innovative serological tools based on glycoarrays. He then joined the Mass Spectrometry Center of UA as a postdoctoral researcher to address key roles played by protein glycosylation in cancer combining glycomics and glycoproteomics.

In the meantime, he was also the founder of GlyConStruct, a spin-off company aimed to design biotechnological solutions for producing glycopeptides of clinical interest. In 2013, he assumed the coordination of a research team at the Portuguese Institute of Oncology of Porto (IPO-Porto), the largest oncology center in Portugal. In 2016, he also became a member of the Institute of Research and Innovation in Health (i3S) at the University of Porto, and an invited researcher at the International Iberian Nanotechnology Laboratory, to foster the translation of glycan-based technologies into clinical applications.