Beatriz Carvalho

University of Porto / Immuno-oncology

Advisor: Prof. Rui Medeiros

Beatriz Carvalho is tackling one of CAR-T cell therapy's most stubborn bottlenecks — the exhaustion and poor persistence of adoptively transferred cells in the immunosuppressive solid tumour microenvironment. Working under Prof. Rui Medeiros at the University of Porto's IPATIMUP cancer research institute, she has engineered a metabolic conditioning protocol using short-chain fatty acid supplementation during ex vivo expansion that skews differentiation toward a TCF7⁺ central memory phenotype without sacrificing immediate cytotoxicity. Her Seahorse respirometry experiments show that the conditioned cells maintain a higher spare respiratory capacity, which correlates with superior persistence in NSG mouse xenografts bearing HER2-positive ovarian tumour lines. After 28 days, conditioned CAR-T cells represent 12-fold more tumour-infiltrating lymphocytes than conventionally manufactured counterparts, and residual tumour burden is 60% lower. Beatriz has designed a serum-free GMP-compatible version of the protocol and is pursuing an industry postdoc application at Novartis Cell Therapies in Basel, with her co-authorship on a Clinical Cancer Research manuscript providing the academic evidence base for the application.