Catarina Morais

I was born in 1992 and I concluded a Master’s degree in Pharmaceutical Sciences in 2016 at the Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Lisbon. Until 2020, I worked as a community pharmacist. In 2017 I enrolled the PhD program in Biomedical Sciences – Specialization in Microbiology at Instituto de Higiene e Medicina Tropical (IHMT-NOVA). Since 2021, I have been carrying my PhD studies under the scope of a FCT doctoral grant (ref. UI/BD/151061/2021).

My main research interests included antimicrobial resistance, use of antimicrobials in veterinary medicine and staphylococcal infections.

The work that has been developed is part of my PhD Thesis in Biomedical Sciences entitled “Antimicrobial resistance in staphylococci causing skin and soft tissues infections”.

The collection studied includes isolates of Staphylococcus pseudintermedius collected from skin and soft tissues infections in companion animals. The main objectives are:

1. a) To evaluate antibiotic and biocides resistance profiles.
2. b) To identify the main clonal lineages in the studied region.
3. c) To evaluate genomic and transcriptomic alterations associated with the bacterial response to continues exposition to antimicrobials.

1. Santos Costa, S; Ferreira, C; Ribeiro, R; Febler, AT; Schink, A-K; Kadlec, K; Kaspar, H; Amaro, A; Albuquerque, T; Abrantes, P; Morais, C; Pomba, C; Couto, I. “Proposal of Epidemiological Cutoff Values for Apramycin 15 mg and Florfenicol 30 mg disks applicable to Staphylococcus aureus”. Microbial Drug Resistance. 2021. 27; 11:1555-1559. http://dx.doi.org/10.1089/mdr.2020.0402.
2. Andrade, M; Oliveira, K; Morais, C; Abrantes, P; Pomba, C; Rosato, AE; Couto, I; Santos Costa, S. “Increased virulence potential of biofilm-producing coagulase-positive staphylococci associated with animal pyoderma”. 5^th Annual Texas Medical Center Antimicrobial Resistance & Stewardship conference. Webconference, 2022.
3. Morais, C; Santos Costa, S; Andrade, M; Ramos, B; Leal, M; Abrantes, P; Pomba, C; Couto, I. “Clonal lineages of Staphylococcus pseudintermedius associated with skin and soft tissue infections in pets, Portugal” (Abstract n. 3395). 31^st European Congress on Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ECCMID) Webconference, 2021.
4. Morais, C; Santos Costa, S; Andrade, M; Ramos, B; Leal, M; Abrantes, P; Pomba, C; Couto, I. “Molecular characterization of Staphylococcus pseudintermedius associated with skin and soft tissue infections in pets, Portugal” (Abstract n. 365). Congresso Nacional de Microbiologia e Biotecnologia (MicroBiotec 21). Webconference, 2021
5. Morais, C; Santos Costa, S; Pomba, C; Couto, I. “Antibiotic resistance in Staphylococcus pseudintermedius causing skin and soft tissue infections in pets” (Abstract 99). 1^st International Conference of the European College of Veterinary Microbiology. Athens, Greece, 2019.