Ana Clara Cristóvão obtained a Basic in Science (Biochemistry) in 2005. In 2002 and 2003 she was a visiting student at The Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, at the Department of Biological Chemistry and the Radiation Detection Physics Laboratory. In 2005, she was accepted into the international PhD program in Cellular Biology and Biomedicine (PDBEB-CNC) of the University of Coimbra.

In 2007, she went to the Neurology and Neurosciences department, Weill Cornell Medical College, New York, USA to work on her PhD thesis. She obtained her PhD in Biology, and neuroscience field, from the University of Coimbra in 2010. In 2011, she was accepted as an associate researcher in the Division of Neuroscience at Burnett School of Biomedical Sciences, College of Medicine, University of Central Florida (UCF), USA. Currently, she is at CICS-UBI, Covilhã, as an assistant researcher.

Her research work in neuroscience aims to understand the role of oxidative stress derived from NADPH oxidase (Nox) enzymes in the neurodegenerative process occurring in Parkinson’s Disease to develop new therapeutic strategies to halt the disease progression. Inline, she is currently investigating the potential of specific inhibitors of Nox1 and antioxidant molecules to protect dopaminergic neurons and the use of innovative reformulations of those molecules to boost their bioavailability and effectiveness in the brain.

To transfer this knowledge to the industry, Dr. Cristóvão has recently co-founded NeuroSoV, a startup dedicated to the development and the pre-clinical validation of molecules with therapeutic potential for Parkinson’s Disease.