Maria Casquinha

public.student_biography

Maria Casquinha obtained her Bachelor’s degree in Biomedical Pharmacy, in the year of 2020, and her Master’s degree in Cellular and Molecular Biology, in 2022, both at the University of Coimbra. Throughout her Bachelor's, Maria took her first steps in the research area, by contacting with animal models in the context of a course regarding pre-clinical drug development and by sporadically colaborating in the experimental work of accumulation assays to assess the inhibitory effect of antiepileptic drugs over BCRP, developed for a doctoral thesis in Pharmaceutical Sciences under the supervision of Professor Ana Fortuna, PhD. During her Master’s, she first joined the Neuronal Circuits and Behavior Group, at Center for Neuroscience and Cell Biology (CNC) for a Laboratory Rotation course, where she followed several projects occuring at the time, attended Lab Meetings and generated a grant proposal as a form of evaluation. In these circumstances, she began to acquire knowledge and expertise in the field of microglia, which she further developed with her thesis work under the supervision of Doctor Joana Guedes. In said project, which considered the epidemiological link between allergies and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), the main aim was to dissect the effects of triggered allergic airway inflammation in a postnatal house dust mites animal model on microglia and the cerebellar circuitry, by the use of cellular and molecular techniques such as flow cytometry, qRT-PCR and ELISA assays. Maria retrieved and processed brain slices, performed immunohistochemistry (IHC), used confocal microscopy, and accompanied electrophysiological recordings and behavior experiments. This work provided mechanistic insight into the function of interleukin-4 in the maturation of neuronal circuits. Briefly, during a second Laboratory Rotation course, at the Neurotrophin signaling and synaptic (dys)function laboratory (CNC), Maria was instructed in Western Blots and IHC.