Ana Luísa Correia
Ana Luisa Correia completed her major in Applied Biology (with a specialization in Cancer Biology) at the University of Minho, in 2006. She started her career in breast cancer research in the laboratory of Fernando Schmitt (University of Minho). In 2008, Ana Luisa joined the GABBA Ph.D. program from the University of Porto, and she ventured to California to explore the role of the microenvironment in breast cell invasion at the laboratory of Mina Bissell (Lawrence Berkeley Lab, USA). Her discovery of an alternative to the classic paradigm of matrix metalloproteinase (MMP) activity was published in Genes & Development,and yielded a patent. In 2014, Ana Luisa started her postdoc in the laboratory of Mohamed Bentires-Alj (University of Basel, Switzerland), where she explored tissue-specific mechanisms that control progression of breast cancer from dormant to metastatic. Ana Luisa’s research has redefined key concepts at the intersection of Cancer Dormancy, Inflammation, and Immunity, and resulted in a major publication in the prestigious journal Nature. Ana Luisa has been awarded a prestigious EMBO postdoctoral fellowship, 3 grants as Project Leader, and a number of international awards, such as the 2021 Metastasis Research Prize, the 2022 Pfizer Oncology, and the AACR 2022 NextGen Stars Award. Ana Luisa is now a Principal Investigator at the Champalimaud Foundation, where she leads the Cancer Dormancy & Immunity Lab. Broadly, her group is interested in dissecting the interactions of disseminated tumor cells (DTCs) with the unique microenvironment in each distant site, thus providing a roadmap of tissue-specific vulnerabilities that may be explored therapeutically to prevent metastasis. Ana Luisa is keen in involving patient advocates in her research, and has been an active member of the AACR, EACR, MRS and ASPIC societies in joined effort to make cancer a tractable problem.
