Araci Rondon is a postdoctoral researcher at the division of Thrombosis and Hemostasis, department of Internal Medicine, Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC). Her research focuses on Tissue Factor, extracellular vesicles, 3D cellular models, cancer-associated thrombosis and organ-on-a-chip technology.
During her PhD (2012-2017) at Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ, Brazil), she evaluated the influence of blood clotting proteins in tumor progression. She studied whether Tissue Factor (TF), the main activator of blood coagulation, is involved in Extracellular Vesicles (EVs) release (Rondon, et al., 2018), showed that TF directs secretion of EVs and described the pathways involved. During her PhD, she was awarded a grant from the Brazilian government (Science Without Borders, National Council for Scientific and Technological – CNPq) to work with Prof. Dr. Henri Versteeg, LUMC, The Netherlands (December 2013-November 2014).
Since January 2018, she has been recruited by Prof. Henri Versteeg to the Einthoven Laboratory for Vascular and Regenerative Medicine. In November 2018, she got an ISTH/EHA fellowship award to study the release of TF positive EVs from 2D and 3D tumor-stromal models for two months (April and May 2019) at the laboratory of Dr. Camille Ettelaie (Department of Biomedical Sciences, University of Hull, Kingston upon Hull). In 2019, dr. Araci Rondon and Prof. Henri Versteeg in collaboration with Mimetas BV, the world leader in the organ-on-a-chip field, were awarded by Health Holland to develop an animal-free methods to study thrombosis in cancer patients.