Flávio Costa, MSc in Biochemistry, is currently a Research Technician at Center for Innovative Care and Health Technology (ciTechCare), Polytechnic of Leiria. He has a BSc (2016) and MSc graduation (2019) in Biochemistry, from Faculty of Sciences of University of Porto and Abel Salazar Biomedical Sciences Institute, Portugal. In his MSc thesis, entitled "On the role of adenosine-sensitive P1 receptors in human chondrogenesis" he gained expertise in human-mesenchymal stem cells (hMSCs) culture, cell viability assays, protein separation by high-performance liquid chromatography, immunoblotting and immunocytochemistry. Concomitantly he first authored a review entitled “Adenosinergic signalling in chondrogenesis and cartilage homeostasis: Friend or foe?”, published at Biochemical Pharmacology journal (DOI:10.1016/j.bcp.2019.113784) and presented his work at the Portuguese Society of Pharmacology (SPF) 2019 Meeting. He was also invited to lecture Pharmacology practical classes to Medicine, Veterinary Medicine and Bioengineering MSc courses. In 2020, Flávio collaborated in designing and writing a winning project under the RESEARCH4COVID-19 funding call by Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT). The project entitled “Purinome-rejuvenated autologous STEM cells against COVID-19. Who´s gonna win the ageing battle?” allowed him to acquire additional experience in co-culture experiments of immortalized human bronchial epithelial cells and hMSCs. Results were presented at the European Alliance for Global Health Transformation 2022 Annual Summit, through the joint Research and Innovation Action (EUGLHORIA) Seeding Conference, hosted by Lund University-Sweden. He joined ciTechCare in 2021 as a Research Fellow to work in ForPharmacy project, funded by FCT and Compete2020, a co-promotion project led by the pharmacy-dedicated international IT company Glintt. His work was focused on herb-medicine interactions and antimicrobial resistance survey and prevention as an integrated service in the Portuguese pharmacies. Two scientific reviews are currently under submission for journal publication, and the first work was presented at the SPF 2024 Meeting. During this period, he won an international mobility exchange grant to do a brief laboratory internship at the Shannon Applied Biotechnology Centre, Technological University of Shannon, Ireland. There he optimized and conducted in vitro competition assays between yeast/fungi and bacteria to screen for novel antimicrobial molecules. He was also invited to lecture BSc Nutrition and Dietetics Food Toxicology classes at Polytechnic of Leiria School of Health Sciences, and to write an opinion article for a local newspaper, Diário de Leiria, on the subject of antimicrobial stewardship. In October 2023 he was competitively selected to work as a Research Technician in ciTechCare based CeliAct(TIV) project: “Translocation, Inflammation and Virulence: dissecting mechanisms of gluten-microbiota interactions in Celiac Disease”, funded by Beyond Celiac Foundation, under the supervision of Sónia Gonçalves Pereira, CeliAct(TIV) principal investigator. Since then, he has gained experience in bacteria isolation from fecal samples and screening of gliadin-degrading bacteria, having fully implemented and optimized sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis and size-exclusion fast protein liquid chromatography techniques in the laboratory. Under CeliAct(TIV) project scope, he is currently doing another international internship, at the Celiac Disease Research Center, University of Tampere, Finland, to conduct experiments on gliadin-associated immunoreactivity in intestinal cell lines using transepithelial/transendothelial electrical resistance, immunofluorescence microscopy and RNA-sequencing.