Cláudia Nunes Santos is the NIMSB Vice-director for Research.
Dr. Cláudia Nunes dos Santos is Principal Investigator at NOVA Medical School and Guest Researcher at NIMSB. Her research is focused on understanding the role of polyphenols in providing the health benefits associated with consuming bioactive-rich plant foods and understanding the mechanistic basis of these beneficial changes. She is particularly interested in the ability of polyphenols metabolites to reach the brain and prevent or reverse the main hallmarks of neurodegenerative diseases.
She received her PhD at University of Lisbon in Plant Biochemistry and conducted her postdoctoral studies at Institute of Technology and Chemistry Biology, Portugal. She then worked as a Research Group Leader of the Molecular Nutrition and Health Lab at ITQB NOVA, before joining NOVA Medical School in Lisbon. She was awarded in 2018 with an ERC starting grant for zooming the link between diet and brain health focused in how phenolic metabolites modulate brain inflammation. Recently she was awarded with an ERC Proof-of-concept focused on a novel small molecule “NeuroShield” for tackling Parkinson’s Disease. She was also involved in a series of EU projects as a group leader and work-package leader (FP7-EUBerry; FP7-BacHBerry; Horizon2020-CHIC) and have attracted funding from Portuguese National Agency.
She has published over 100 papers in peer-reviewed journals (H-Index of 35, Web of Science).