CISA researchers Cláudia Fançony Videira and Cruz Sebastião were two of the winners of the PALOP Involve Science project run by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.

CISA is to host the development of the projects led by these CISA researchers through to 2024. 

The project led by Cláudia Fançony, entitled “Probing the future of Triple Artemisinin-based Combination Therapy in Angola”, was developed during an internship at ICVS, University of Minho and consists of exploring the opposing forces applied by two drugs with the same target, the malaria parasite, susceptible of triggering mechanisms with incompatible resistance.

Cruz Sebastião is to head the project “Next-generation sequencing to understand the HIV-1 transmission patterns in Angola”, following an internship at IHMT- Nova University of Lisbon, with the objective of exploring the patterns of transmission and spread of HIV as well as understanding the emergence of resistant mutations, the impact of antiretroviral treatment schemes and the costs incurred treating patients with antiretroviral resistance in the country. 

The relevance, originality and quality of the proposed projects, coupled with the forecast impact on the development of the personal skills of the candidate and the capacities of their institutions represent the criteria taken into account in the evaluation.

These projects were selected by an international jury under the auspices of the PALOP INVOLVE Science program, an initiative run by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation with the objective of supporting the development of scientific healthcare careers for young PALOP researchers through consolidating the career structures in their countries of origin and reinforcing the respective science systems. The aforementioned researchers spent eight months in Portugal at scientific institution that hosted the development of their projects.