Madalena graduted as PharmD in the Universidade de Lisboa. She started to work in the Chemical Biology and Toxicology Group of the Research Institute for Medicines and Pharmaceutical Sciences (iMed.ULisboa) as undergraduate student, studying redox regulation and using 3D breast cancer cell models for drug screening studies. In her PhD thesis, Madalena developed stem cell derived long-term hepatic models using several 3D cell culture systems. During her thesis, Madalena was a visitor researcher in the Bioreactor Group, Berlin Brandenburg Center for Regenerative Therapies (BCRT), Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin. Madalena obtained her PhD in Pharmacy (Toxicology) by the Universidade de Lisboa in 2017.
In 2018, Madalena worked in the European Union Reference Laboratory for alternatives to animal testing (EURL-ECVAM) supporting the input of the European Commission to the development of international guidance on the use of in vitro methods for classification and labelling of chemicals (GHS) and gaining a broad knowledge of regulatory toxicology, test method validation and applications of alternative methods in biomedical research. Madalena joined the Organ-on-a-Chip group as a postdoctoral fellow in July 2018.
Currently, Madalena is working on developing and testing an immunocompetent model of the Choroid of the eye and is involved on activities within the ORCHID project on the training needs of the next generation of scientists and technicians in the Organ-on-a-chip. Madalena was awarded with a Marie Curie IF in 2018 and will soon start to work on the white adipose tissue-liver inter tissue crosstalk in the contest of insulin resistance.
