From a very young age, I have always wanted to help improve other people’s lives. This motivated me to take BSc and MSc degrees in biomedical sciences at the University of Algarve to understand diseases' molecular mechanisms and potentially identify paths to new treatments. During this time, I discovered a deep interest in molecular and cellular biology and genetics. My career as a biomedical researcher started in 2012 with a short internship at the Faculty of Pharmacy University of Lisbon focused on the molecular diagnosis of neurometabolic disease. Later, as an MSc student, I studied the role of vitamin K-dependent proteins in ectopic calcification at the Centre of Marine Sciences (CCMAR-Algarve). After my MSc, I was offered a two-year research fellowship to keep developing the same research, which was crucial to improving my technical skills in the lab along with my critical thinking. As I have always been passionate about learning, in 2017 I decided to enroll in a Ph.D. program at the Faculty of Sciences University of Lisbon, Portugal, in collaboration with the University College Cork, Ireland. In this four-year program (the first two years were spent in Cork and the other two in Lisbon), I decided to broaden my horizons from diagnostics to characterizing disease mechanisms and exploring potential therapeutic strategies. Thus, I started working on Cystic Fibrosis and gene editing under the supervision of Carlos M. Farinha, Ph.D. and Patrick T. Harrison, Ph.D. My Ph.D. project focused on the development of state-of-the-art gene editing tools, first to develop new cell models carrying different CF-causing mutations to understand the effects of the different mutations on the transcriptome and proteome of the cells. This was crucial to get a better understanding of CF mechanisms, which can help predict disease severity, and, ultimately, uncover new drug targets. The second application was to use gene editing tools to develop novel strategies to correct the root cause of CF. After completing my PhD, I have focused my research on the W1282X-CFTR mutation, a nonsense mutation that is non-responsive to any of the currently approved CFTR modulator therapies. In 2021, we obtained initial funding from Cystic Fibrosis Foundation to work on the development of a base editing tool to correct W1282X-CFTR and understand which cells of the lung epithelia and how many of them we need to target to restore CFTR function in the lungs. From 2021 to 2023 in collaboration with University College Cork (where I spent one more year) and the Biosystems and Integrative Sciences Institute (BioISI), I developed a new cell model by gene editing carrying the W1282X-CFTR mutation on the BCi-NS1.1 background and patented a new base editing tool, called Split-ABE, which can correct W1282X-CFTR with minimal bystander effects (one of the major downsides of base editing). To continue expanding my knowledge and work towards the development of new therapies, in June 2023, I joined the Cell Line Development and Molecular Virology (CLD&MV) at iBET where I have been developing cell lines for viral vector manufacturing.