PEDRO COSTA
UCIBIO, FCT NOVA
Toxins, poisons, and venoms: How to turn noxious marine animals into biotechnological assets
Chair: Susana Gaudêncio, UCIBIO - FCT NOVA
Abstract
Biological toxins hold great biotechnological potential due to their ability to interfere with specific biological pathways. With this respect, the oceans, owing to their immense biodiversity, can provide safer and more cost-effective solutions than the paradigmatic approach to drug discovery, which heavily relies in the design of synthetic bioactives. Exploring marine toxins is, nonetheless, as challenging as it is fascinating. It begins with marine ecology and runs through physiology, toxicity testing and molecular toxicology before knowledge can be effectively translated to industry. Today we will explore how the holistic perspective brought by Systems Toxicology and “omics” can be put to use in this field of research, based on our special case-studies with uncanny marine invertebrates.
Short Bio
Pedro costa is a biologist from FCUL, with an MSc from IST-UTL and a PhD from FCT-NOVA (awarded in 2011). He is a specialised in aquatic and molecular toxicology, with emphasis on genotoxicology, histopathology and “omics”. After a period in The Karolinska Institute of Sweden, he founded the SeaTox Lab@UCIBIO, FCT-NOVA, in late 2017, which, driven by an exceptional team of young researchers, is dedicated to environmental toxicology and toxin-based marine biotechnology. Pedro Costa now congregate research with teaching at DCV. He is currently PI of three multi-disciplinary and multi-research group projects dedicated to marine toxins and drug discovery.