(Chemical) Bonding is what makes life possible

Catarina Faria-Silva concluded her MSc in 2015 with her thesis focusing on the development of topical formulations of active drugs for the treatment of Cutaneous Leishmaniasis (CL), under the supervision of Sandra Simões and Manuela Carvalheiro. After completing her Master degree, she embraced the pharmaceutical career, as a community pharmacist, developing several soft skills and taking courses of interest for serving the population. She returned to academia 2 years later as a research fellow at iMed.ULisboa, joining a project team (“Targeted liposomal antioxidant and anti-inflammatory therapy for liver ischemic reperfusion injury”), for 21 months. During this period, she was directly involved in the development and characterization of drug delivery systems to be assayed both in vitro and in vivo. In parallel, she collaborated in another research project (Ref. EXPL7CVT-EPI/0862/2012) dealing with the evaluation of an amphotericin B formulation developed for topical application on the CL management context. In February 2020 she has enrolled in a partial time PhD degree to work in the extraction of a bioactive molecule from green tomatoes to find new treatments for CL, a disease she was already familiar with. During these years she has contributed for the preparation of several scientific publications.