Joana Paredes

Joana Paredes (JParedes) is the group leader of the Cancer Metastasis group at i3S and Affiliated Professor at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Porto. Currently, she is also the President of the Portuguese Association for Cancer Research (ASPIC). JParedes graduated in Biology at Coimbra University in 1999 and completed her PhD at the Faculty of Medicine of Porto University in 2004. For 2 years, she worked in the Cancer Research Laboratory of Gent University (Belgium), a reference lab in cell-cell adhesion and cancer. Throughout JParedes’ scientific research career, she has been always committed to understand how cell-cell adhesion signaling regulates collective cell invasion, metabolic behavior and stem cell properties of cancer cells, supporting the use of adhesion molecules as prognostic and predictive biomarkers in cancer. As Principal Investigator, her research focus is to challenge the dogma that cell-cell adhesion needs to be lost for cancer cells to invade and metastasize. Using breast cancer as a model, she demonstrated that cell-cell adhesion mediated by P-cadherin provides invasive and stem-like properties to cancer cells. Recently, she showed that P-cadherin expression can be induced by hypoxia, which then activates the pentose phosphate pathway and decreases oxidative stress in matrix-detached breast cancer cells. These results led her to believe that cell-cell adhesion award plasticity and a survival advantage to cancer cells while in circulation, being determinant for an increased metastatic behavior. JParedes has published 86 articles in international peer-reviewed journals and 4 book chapters. These manuscripts have gathered more than 3900 citations by peers, endowing her an h-index of 38. She already coordinated 14 and participated in 11 research projects and already acted as a reviewer of post-doc and PhD fellowships, as well as of scientific projects, for national and international agencies. As a mentor, JParedes has already supervised or co-supervised 8 PhD students and 17 MSc students.