Janssen Neuroscience Prize awarded for work on Parkinson's Disease

The award-winning work, entitled "Intracellular traffic-dependent pathways as a unifying premise in sporadic Parkinson's disease: a new therapeutic target", although not yet the discovery of a new drug, has made it possible to uncover malfunctions in an intra-cellular traffic mechanism. Once this dysfunction has been identified, it will be possible to continue the research which could contribute to a more effective treatment in the future for a disease which affects more than 20,000 Portuguese and registers around 2,000 cases every year. 

The 41-year-old researcher received her doctorate in Biology from the Faculty of Science and Technology of the University of Coimbra, is currently a professor at the Faculty of Medicine and has been carrying out this research on Parkinson's disease at the Center for Neuroscience and Cell Biology (CNC) at the same university for three years.

The Janssen Neurosciences Prize is awarded every two years and was created by Janssen, a pharmaceutical company, with the aim of rewarding excellent national research in this important scientific area. 

Sandra Cardoso considers this award to be 'a recognition of research carried out in Portugal and, in this case, by Portuguese people'.

 The award ceremony took place yesterday, March 18, at 6:30 p.m. in the Pavilion of Knowledge.