Olga Matos

Olga Matos is a retired Professor at the Institute of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (IHMT), NOVA University of Lisbon (UNL), where she coordinated the Group of Opportunistic Protozoa/HIV and Other Protozoa of the Medical Parasitology Unit and is a Senior Researcher at the research center GHTM/UNL. She graduated in Medicine from the Faculty of Medical Sciences at UNL and completed her Master’s, Doctorate and Aggregation in the Branch of Biomedical Sciences, Specialty of Parasitology, at IHMT/UNL.

Main scientific areas of interest: Medical Parasitology, Medical Protozoology, Infectious Diseases and Molecular Biology. She was responsible for the design, planning, coordination and management of several national and international research projects.

She is the editor of a book, author of 13 book chapters and more than 100 articles published in international and national scientific journals and holds patent PT109078.

She was also coordinator of a Community Service Provision Laboratory (specialized laboratory tests in the field of intestinal protozoa, African and American trypanosomiasis, toxoplasmosis and pneumocystosis).

Also, she has been a member of evaluation panels for Research Centers, PhD Scholarships, Post-doctoral degrees and research projects in the European Union, Portugal, France, Austria, South Africa and Israel. In addition, she holds editorial roles on the Editorial Board of five international Research Journals and acts as a reviewer in several international and national specialty journals.

Olga Matos has been developing research in the areas of molecular epidemiology of infections caused by Toxoplasma gondii, Giardia duodenalis, Cryptosporidium spp., microsporidia and Pneumocystis spp., in humans and animals.  The group has also developed research in detection and molecular characterization of waterborne Giardia, Cryptosporidium,  microsporidia; drug resistance and susceptibility genes associated with pneumocistosis; In vitro and in vivo drug susceptibility studies in Pneumocystis and Toxoplasma infections; epidemiology of Chagas disease in Portugal, a non-endemic country; study on the recombinant antibodies and peptides used for immunotherapy and vaccination of cryptosporidiosis; development of new tools for diagnosis and molecular characterization of opportunistic, emergent and re-emergent infections.

1. SZYDŁOWICZ M. & MATOS O. (2021). Pneumocystis pneumonia in the COVID-19 pandemic era: similarities and challenges. Trends in Parasitology, 37(10): 859-862. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pt.2021.07.010
2. SALAMANDANE C., LOBO M. L., AFONSO S., MIAMBO R. & MATOS O. (2021). Occurrence of intestinal parasites of public health significance in fresh horticultural products sold in Maputo markets and supermarkets, Mozambique. Microorganisms, 9, 1806. https://doi.org/10.3390/microorganisms9091806.
3. Tomás, A. L., De Almeida, M. P., Cardoso, F., Pinto, M., Pereira, E., Franco, R., Matos, O. (2019). Development of a gold nanoparticle-based lateral-flow immunoassay for Pneumocystis pneumonia serological diagnosis at point-of-care. Frontiers in Microbiology, 10:2917. https://doi.org/10.3389/fmicb.2019.02917
4. Lobo M. L., Augusto J., Antunes F., Ceita J., Xiao L., Codices V., Matos O. (2014). Cryptosporidium spp., Giardia duodenalis, Enterocytozoon bieneusi and other intestinal parasites in young children in Democratic Republic of São Tomé and Principe. PLoS ONE, 9(5): e97708. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0097708
5. LOBO M. L., XIAO L., ANTUNES F. & MATOS O. (2009). Occurrence of Cryptosporidium and Giardia genotypes and subtypes in raw and treated water in Portugal. Letters in Applied Microbiology, 48: 732-737. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1472-765x.2009.02605.x