As part of the RESMALDETECT Exploratory Project, the GHTM-IHMT received a visit from Ciara O’Sullivan, Research Professor in Engineering Sciences at Chemical Engineering Department, Universitat Rovira i Virgili (Tarragona, Spain), on the 17th and 18th November.
During this two-days visit, Ciara O’Sullivan, member of the THOP-GHTM Research Group had the opportunity to monitor the ongoing work within the scope of the RESMALDETECT project, and lecture a GHTM session titled “Solid-phase isothermal primer elongation using ferrocene-labelled dNTPs for the electrochemical detection of single nucleotide polymorphisms”, which occurred on the 18th November.
Aiming to perform an in loco evaluation of the SPINIT point-of-care diagnostic device, Ciara O’Sullivan and Ana Tavares participated in a meeting and visit the facilities of the biotechnology company Biosurfit, coordinated by Maria João Costa (R&D Director).
Ciara O’Sullivan and her URV team, composed by the Spanish researchers Mayreli Rodriguez and Miriam Rubio, has been developing research work in collaboration with several GHTM-Group Researchers, such as VDB group (Ana Tavares, Ana Paula Arez), THOP group (Miguel Viveiros, Diana Machado) and IHC group (Marcelo U. Ferreira).
Ciara O’Sullivan’s research interests focus on reducing to practise cost-effective molecular diagnostics for screening and monitoring of disease and Ana Tavares highlighted from this visit “a possible collaboration between GHTM-IHMT and Biosurfit, within the scope of adapting the approach of optical detection of malaria resistance genes (RESMALDETEC project) to the SPINIT device”. It is also expected that this collaboration might open the doors to “join application for new funding proposals”, as well as a collaboration of Ciara O’Sullivan as invited speaker in a Master’s class in Medical Microbiology.