2017 Pulido Valente Award honors PhD student from iMM

The article "Atomic force microscopy as a tool to evaluate the risk of cardiovascular diseases in patients," written by researcher Ana Filipa Guedes and published in 2016 in Nature Nanotechnology, is the winner of the 2017 Pulido Valente Award, which this year focused on the field of cardiology. The award ceremony will be presided over by the Minister of Science, Technology, and Higher Education, Manuel Heitor, and will take place on March 1, at 3:00 p.m., in the Salão Nobre of the Palácio das Laranjeiras, in Lisbon.

The PhD student at the Institute of Molecular Medicine (iMM) analyzed the interaction between fibrinogen (a blood plasma protein that plays a key role in the coagulation process and has been identified as a potential risk factor for cardiovascular disease) and red blood cells in patients with chronic heart failure, in order to understand how fibrinogen influences the aggregation of these cells.

In this analysis, carried out using a nanotechnology technique—atomic force microscopy (AFM)—it was found that the force required to break the bond between fibrinogen and red blood cells in patients with chronic heart failure is higher than in healthy individuals. During a year-long follow-up, it was observed that those who had higher fibrinogen-red blood cell binding forces, as measured by AFM at the beginning of the study, were more likely to be hospitalized due to cardiovascular complications during the following 12 months.

The study demonstrates the significant contribution of nanomedicine in the field of cardiology, facilitating the identification of new biomarkers for cardiovascular risk assessment and thereby improving clinical prognosis.

In 2017, Ana Filipa Guedes also received the SPBf Young Biophysicist Award from the Portuguese Biophysics Society; in 2016, she was awarded the Best Poster Award by the Portuguese Biophysics Society and, in 2014, the Best Communication Award by the International Fibrinogen Research Society-France.

The Pulido Valente Science Award is given annually to the best article published in the field of biomedical sciences that describes the results of research carried out by a researcher under the age of 35 at the time of application, at a national R&D institution. The prize is worth €10,000, jointly funded by the Professor Francisco Pulido Valente Foundation and the Foundation for Science and Technology, in accordance with the protocol established between the two institutions.