Graduate from the School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, from São Paulo State University (UNESP) in Pharmacy and Biochemistry (1988). Has a Ph.D. in Pathologic Anatomy at Campinas State
University?s School of Medicine (UNICAMP) for developing a research of high-risk Human Papillomavirus (HPV), using the in-situ hybridization technique to typify HPV16 and HPV18 in paraffin embedded sections from endoscopic biopsies of esophageal lesions. After her doctorate, she continued molecular studies with low-risk HPV (6 and 11) and high-risk HPV (16 and 18) in oral cancer biopsies in collaboration with the Department of Pathology, at the School of Dentistry of Araraquara (UNESP). Her first post-doctorate study was accomplished at the University of São Paulo?s School of Medicine of Ribeirão Preto (FMUSP), under the supervision of Ph.D. Eduardo
Antônio Donadi, evaluating RNA?s expression in head and neck cancer using microarray technology. In that context, she was invited to collaborate with Associated Professor Edson Garcia Soares, from the Department of Pathology at the University of São Paulo (USP), as supervisor of master, doctorate and post-doctoral students. After that, she was accepted to a second post-doctoral study in Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, at the Department of Infectious Diseases, under the supervision of Ph.D. Karl Munger. There, she worked with natural compounds in keratinocytes transfected with E6, E7 and E6^E7 DNA of HPV16. She?s spent all her career investigating therapeutic strategies using natural compounds against cancer development, engaging in a great variety of studies, with emphasis in head and neck cancer, as well as cervical cancer, all associated to HPV infection. Those studies were possible thanks to an invitation to be a researcher in collaboration with a gruoup of other researchers in a thematic project (INCT/FAPESP), coordinated by Full Professor Vanderlan Bolzani da Silva from the Chemistry Institute of Araraquara (UNESP). In order to further our investigations, we established a new collaboration with Associated Professor Dr. Marlus Chorilli, from School of Pharmaceutical Sciences (UNESP), with the goal to verify whether nanoemulsion systems could be feasible to enhance the activity of natural and/or synthetic compounds against tumorigenesis in HPV16 positive cell lines (SiHa and CasKi). Her studies aimed to investigate molecular mechanisms to better understand the ability of natural or synthetic compounds to disrupt cancer cells proliferation, to promote apoptosis and its intrinsic signals, resulting in the arrest of cell cycle and recovery of p53?s and pRb?s expression, respectively degraded and deregulated by E6 and E7 viral oncoproteins. Recently, she initiated a collaboration involving multiple researchers from different scientific groups in a national (Brazil, e.g. São Paulo Chemistry Institute, USP) and international (from Australia, Portugal, France, Italy and Argentina) level an International collaboration. She is, presently, Associated Professor of Cytology and Cellular Biology, at the School of Pharmaceutical Sciences (UNESP); apart from that, she supervises undergraduate, master, doctorate and post-doctoral students from different regions in Brazil. She belongs to an officially recognized excellence post-graduation course in Bioscience and Biotechnology Applied to Pharmacy, according CAPES (Brazilian Scientific Foundation to Research) considered excellence graduate program (grade 7)
graduation at Farmácia Bioquímica from Universidade Estadual Paulista Júlio de Mesquita Filho (1988) and doctorate at Anatomia Patológica from Universidade Estadual de Campinas (1996). Has experience in Pharmacy, acting on the following subjects: citologia, papilomavírus humano, lavado nasal, métodos diagnósticos and hibridização in situ.
