Luciana Amorim Perestrelo de Meneses (0510-84F1-D20D)

Curriculum Vitae

Luciana Amorim Perestrelo de Meneses

Luciana Meneses completed the integrated master’s degree in Biomedical Engineering in October 2019 at the University of Minho (Portugal). Her master’s thesis, focused on patient safety in the operating room and surveillance of surgical site infections, was developed during a one-year internship at the Department of Infection Prevention and Control of a Portuguese Hospital. Luciana joined the Azeredo Lab (Portugal) as research fellow in November 2019, where she worked on the construction of Pseudomonas aeruginosa synthetic (bacterio)phages to control bacterial infections. Between October 2020 and June 2025, Luciana was a joint PhD student in Biomedical Engineering and Pharmaceutical Sciences, resulting from a collaboration between the Azeredo Lab in Portugal and the Laboratory of Pharmaceutical Microbiology of Ghent University in Belgium. Her PhD work focused on the improvement of phage efficacy against biofilm-related infections, caused by Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Staphylococcus aureus, by phage adaptation and genetic manipulation. Phage modifications were conducted in Portugal and tested in Belgium making use of in vitro and in vivo-like models of biofilm-related infections. Luciana has been also part of the Phage Therapy team at the Azeredo Lab, being involved in processing phage requests and following up patients with biofilm-related infections caused by P. aeruginosa. Since February 2025, Luciana has been working as Researcher in the project ASCLEPIUS, with a focus on characterization of therapeutic phages and phage-biofilm interactions. Luciana is author of 3 journal articles, 1 book chapter, 3 posters and 4 oral presentations at international conferences (with 2 awards), and team member of 2 projects (2022-2023). She is also member of the Ethics Council of the University of Minho and has been involved in several science dissemination activities, including Pint of Science.

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Identificação

Identificação pessoal

Nome completo: Luciana Amorim Perestrelo de Meneses

Nomes de citação

Meneses, Luciana

Identificadores de autor

Ciência ID: 0510-84F1-D20D
ORCID iD: 0000-0001-9497-1200

Endereços de correio eletrónico

luciana.meneses@ceb.uminho.pt (Profissional)

Moradas

CEB - Centro de Engenharia Biológica, Universidade do Minho, 4710-057, Gualtar, Braga, Portugal (Profissional)

Websites

https://www.ceb.uminho.pt/People/Profile/lucianameneses (Profissional)

Domínios de atuação

Ciências Médicas e da Saúde - Biotecnologia Médica - Biotecnologia Aplicada à Saúde
Ciências Médicas e da Saúde - Ciências da Saúde - Epidemiologia
Ciências Naturais - Ciências Biológicas - Microbiologia
Ciências Naturais - Ciências Biológicas - Biologia Molecular

Idiomas

Idioma	Conversação	Leitura	Escrita	Compreensão	Peer-review
Português (Idioma materno)
Inglês	Utilizador proficiente (C1)	Utilizador proficiente (C1)	Utilizador proficiente (C1)	Utilizador proficiente (C1)	Utilizador proficiente (C1)
Espanhol; Castelhano	Utilizador elementar (A2)	Utilizador elementar (A2)	Utilizador elementar (A2)	Utilizador elementar (A2)	Utilizador elementar (A2)

Formação

	Grau	Classificação
2020/10/23 - 2025/06/13 Concluído	Doctoral Program in Biomedical Engineering/Pharmaceutical Sciences (Doutoramento) Universidade do Minho Centro de Engenharia Biológica, Portugal Universiteit Gent Faculteit Farmaceutische Wetenschappen, Bélgica "Genetically engineered phages to tackle polymicrobial biofilm-related infections" (TESE/DISSERTAÇÃO)
2014/09 - 2019/10/02 Concluído	Integrated Master's in Biomedical Engineering (Mestrado integrado) Especialização em Clinical Engineering Universidade do Minho, Portugal ""Patient safety assessment and improvement in the operating room of a health-care facility"" (TESE/DISSERTAÇÃO)

Percurso profissional

Outros

	Categoria Profissional Instituição de acolhimento	Empregador
2025/02/01 - Atual	Research Fellow of ASCLEPIUS project: Isolation, characterization and deposition of therapeutic phages and interaction studies between bacteriophages and bacterial biofilms.	Universidade do Minho Centro de Engenharia Biológica, Portugal
	Universidade do Minho Centro de Engenharia Biológica, Portugal
2021/01/01 - 2025/06/13	PhD Student	Universidade do Minho Centro de Engenharia Biológica, Portugal
	Universidade do Minho Centro de Engenharia Biológica, Portugal
2021/01/01 - 2025/06/13	PhD Student	Universiteit Gent Faculteit Farmaceutische Wetenschappen, Bélgica
	Universiteit Gent Faculteit Farmaceutische Wetenschappen, Bélgica
2019/11/05 - 2020/03/31	Research fellow of Synphage project - Construction of synthetic phages to combat infectious bacterial diseases	Universidade do Minho Centro de Engenharia Biológica, Portugal
	Universidade do Minho Centro de Engenharia Biológica, Portugal
2018/09/13 - 2019/06/30	Curricular Internship - Infection Prevention and Control Department	Hospital da Misericórdia de Vila Verde, Portugal
	Hospital da Misericórdia de Vila Verde, Portugal

Projetos

Bolsa

	Designação	Financiadores
2022/04/01 - 2023/04/01	Chimeric phages as a new approach to target P. aeruginosa biofilm-related lung infections No reference Bolseiro de Doutoramento Universidade do Minho Centro de Engenharia Biológica, Portugal	European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases Em curso

Projeto

	Designação	Financiadores
2022 - 2023	PhageShaper: a high-throughput platform to engineer P. aeruginosa phages for infectious disease control EXPL/EMD- EMD/1142/2021 Bolseiro de Doutoramento Universidade do Minho Centro de Engenharia Biológica, Portugal	Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia Em curso
2019/11/05 - 2020/03/31	Synphage - Construction of synthetic phages to combat infectious bacterial diseases POCI-01-0145-FEDER-016643 (PTDC/BBB-BSS/6471/2014) Bolseiro de Investigação Universidade do Minho Centro de Engenharia Biológica, Portugal	Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia Concluído

Produções

Publicações

Artigo em conferência	Meneses, Luciana; Diana Priscila Penso Pires; Jelena Erdmann; Susanne Häussler; Gábor Apjok; Bálint Kintses ; Adelina Amorim; et al. "Phage therapy for multidrug-resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa in a Portuguese cystic fibrosis patient with persistent lung infection". Trabalho apresentado em 1st International Symposium on Advances in Phage Therapeutics, Braga, 2025. Meneses, Luciana; Pires, Diana P.; Sílvio B Santos; Lucie Valentová; Pavel Plevka; Aurélie Crabbé; Tom Coenye; Joana Cecília Valente Rodrigues Azeredo. "Overcoming lipopolysaccharide modification as the key for increased biofilm-control of a Pbunavirus after adaptive evolution on P. aeruginosa biofilms". Trabalho apresentado em Viruses of Microbes 2024 (VoM2024), Cairns, 2024. Costa, Maria João; Meneses, Luciana; Azeredo, Joana; Santos, Sílvio; Pires, Diana P.. "Fast and sensitive detection of Pseudomonas aeruginosa in clinical settings using engineered reporter phages". Trabalho apresentado em Microbiotec23 - Congress of Microbiology and Biotechnology 2023, 2023. Meneses, Luciana; Diana Priscila Penso Pires; Silvio Roberto Branco dos Santos; Aurélie Crabbé; Azeredo, Joana; Coenye, Tom. "In vitro evolution of phages improves their anti-biofilm activity in in vivo-like conditions". Trabalho apresentado em 10th Congress of European Microbiologists - FEMS 2023, Hamburg, 2023. Publicado Diana Priscila Penso Pires; Meneses, Luciana; Monteiro, Rodrigo. Autor correspondente: Diana Priscila Penso Pires. "Engineering P. aeruginosa phages with reduced genomes and improved functionalities towards bacterial detection and control". Trabalho apresentado em 10th Congress of European Microbiologists - FEMS 2023, Hamburg, 2023. Publicado Meneses, Luciana; Costa, Maria João; Mariana Ferreira; Sílvio B Santos; Joana Cecília Valente Rodrigues Azeredo; Pires, Diana P.. "Engineering P. aeruginosa phage genomes with enhanced functionalities". Trabalho apresentado em 33rd ECCMID, Copenhagen, 2023. Publicado Meneses, Luciana; Diana Priscila Penso Pires; Silvio Roberto Branco dos Santos; Azeredo, Joana. "Adaptação evolutiva de bacteriófagos em biofilmes de Pseudomonas aeruginosa para o combate de infeções pulmonares em Fibrose Quística". Trabalho apresentado em Microbiologia 2022 - Congresso internacional de microbiologia em língua Portuguesa, Online, 2022. Publicado Meneses, Luciana; Pires, Diana P.; Sílvio B Santos; Coenye, Tom; Azeredo, Joana. Autor correspondente: Azeredo, Joana. "Use of phages adapted to Pseudomonas aeruginosa biofilms to tackle respiratory tract infections in Cystic Fibrosis (CF)". Trabalho apresentado em EuroBioFilms 2022, Mallorca, 2022. Publicado Meneses, Luciana; Pires, Diana P.; Sílvio B Santos; Coenye, Tom; Azeredo, Joana. Autor correspondente: Azeredo, Joana. "Adaptive evolution of phages towards Pseudomonas aeruginosa biofilm control". Trabalho apresentado em Viruses of Microbes 2022, Guimarães, 2022. Costa, Maria João; Meneses, Luciana; Sílvio B Santos; Azeredo, Joana; Pires, Diana P.. Autor correspondente: Pires, Diana P.. "Phage engineering for the detection of Pseudomonas aeruginosa". Trabalho apresentado em Viruses of Microbes 2022, Guimarães, 2022. Publicado
Artigo em revista	Meneses, Luciana; Ana Catarina Brandão; Tom Coenye; Ana Cristina Braga; Diana Priscila Pires; Joana Azeredo. Autor correspondente: Joana Azeredo. "A systematic review of the use of bacteriophages for in vitro biofilm control". European Journal of Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases (2023): https://doi.org/10.1007/s10096-023-04638-1. Publicado • 10.1007/s10096-023-04638-1 Pires, Diana P; Meneses, Luciana; Brandão, Ana C; Azeredo, Joana. "An overview of the current state of phage therapy for the treatment of biofilm-related infections". Current Opinion in Virology 53 (2022): 101209. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.coviro.2022.101209. Publicado • 10.1016/j.coviro.2022.101209 Pires, Diana P; Costa, Ana Rita; Pinto, Graça; Meneses, Luciana; Azeredo, Joana. "Current challenges and future opportunities of phage therapy". FEMS Microbiology Reviews 44 6 (2020): 684-700. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/femsre/fuaa017. 10.1093/femsre/fuaa017
Capítulo de livro	Meneses, Luciana; Sillankorva, Sanna; Azeredo, Joana. "Bacteriophage Control of Infectious Biofilms". In Methods in Molecular Biology, 141-150. Springer US, 2023. 10.1007/978-1-0716-3523-0_9
Tese / Dissertação	"Genetically engineered phages to tackle polymicrobial biofilm-related infections". Doutoramento, Universidade do Minho Escola de Engenharia, 2025. https://hdl.handle.net/1822/96586. Meneses, Luciana. "Patient safety assessment and improvement in the operating room of a health-care facility". Mestrado, Universidade do Minho, 2019.

Atividades

Apresentação oral de trabalho

	Título da apresentação	Nome do evento Anfitrião (Local do evento)
2024/07/18	Overcoming lipopolysaccharide modification as the key for increased biofilm-control of a Pbunavirus after adaptive evolution on P. aeruginosa biofilms	Viruses of Microbes 2024 Meeting International Society for Viruses of Microorganisms (Cairns, Austrália)
2023/07/11	In vitro evolution of phages improves their anti-biofilm activity in in vivo-like conditions	10th Congress of European Microbiologists - FEMS 2023 FEMS (Hamburg, Alemanha)
2022/10/17	Adaptação evolutiva de bacteriófagos em biofilmes de Pseudomonas aeruginosa para o combate de infeções pulmonares em Fibrose Quística	Microbiologia 2022 - Congresso internacional de microbiologia em língua Portuguesa Sociedade Portuguesa de Microbiologia (Online)
2022/09/03	Use of phages adapted to Pseudomonas aeruginosa biofilms to tackle respiratory tract infections in Cystic Fibrosis (CF)	EuroBioFilms 2022 (Mallorca, Espanha)

Orientação

	Título / Tema Papel desempenhado	Curso (Tipo) Instituição / Organização
2024/04/22 - 2024/06/21	Isolamento e caraterização de bacteriófagos para o controlo de infeções causadas por Pseudomonas aeruginosa Coorientador de Alexandra Ferreira	Licenciatura em Biologia Aplicada (Licenciatura/Bacharelato) Universidade do Minho, Portugal

Organização de evento

	Nome do evento Tipo de evento (Tipo de participação)	Instituição / Organização
2023/10/12 - Atual	Co-organisor and presenter of the 1st Science Week of Ponte de Lima (Portugal) - I Semana da Ciência de Ponte de Lima. This week was dedicated to the dissemination of science from varied fields, to local students and to the general public of the municipality of Ponte de Lima (Portugal). The event included 27 invited speakers, 19 different activities (talks, workshops, round tables, demonstrations and visits) and more than 1000 attendees. (2024/10/07 - 2024/10/12) Congresso (Coorganizador)	Câmara Municipal de Ponte de Lima, Portugal
2025/06/16 - 2025/06/20	Member of the staff team of the "6th International hands-on Phage Biotechnology course". 5-days course on phage techniques, consisting on both theoretical and practical sessions, and covering basic topics such as phage isolation, production and characterization to more advanced techniques focusing on genome annotation, phage display, flow cytometry and RT-PCR. (2025/06/16 - 2025/06/20) Oficina (workshop) (Outra)	Universidade do Minho, Portugal
2025/06/16 - 2025/06/17	Member of the staff team of the "1st International Symposium on Advances in Phage Therapeutics". This symposium connected international experts, researchers, and healthcare professionals to discuss the use of therapy for human medicine, including phages and phage-based solutions, with insights from genomics, bioinformatics, and genetic engineering. (2025/06/16 - 2025/06/17) Simpósio (Outra)	Universidade do Minho, Portugal
2024/01/08 - 2024/06/01	Coordinator of the events team of Pint of Science Braga. Pint of Science is a non-profit organization that organizes a science communication festival annually in the month of May and simultaneously in many cities around the world, including the city of Braga in Portugal. The main goal is to bring the science made in each city to the public in an accessible and attractive way! (2024/05/13 - 2024/05/15) Festival (Membro da Comissão Organizadora)
2022/11/04 - 2024/01/07	Member of the events team of Pint of Science Braga. Pint of Science is a non-profit organization that organizes a science communication festival annually in the month of May and simultaneously in many cities around the world, including the city of Braga in Portugal. The main goal is to bring the science made in each city to the public in an accessible and attractive way! (2023/05/22 - 2023/05/24) Festival (Membro da Comissão Organizadora)
2023/06/19 - 2023/06/23	Member of the staff team of the "5th International hands-on Phage Biotechnology course". 5-days course on phage techniques, consisting on both theoretical and practical sessions, and covering basic topics such as phage isolation, production and characterization to more advanced techniques focusing on genome annotation, phage display, flow cytometry and RT-PCR. (2023/06/19 - 2023/06/23) Oficina (workshop) (Outra)	Universidade do Minho, Portugal
2022/07/18 - 2022/07/22	Member of the staff team of the conference "Viruses of Microbes 2022". The meeting intended to spotlight the most recent advances in ecology and evolution of microbial viruses, virus structures and function, virus-host interaction, agro-food, veterinary and environmental biotechnology applications and phage therapy. (2022/07/18 - 2022/07/22) Conferência (Outra)	Universidade do Minho, Portugal

Participação em evento

	Descrição da atividade Tipo de evento	Nome do evento Instituição / Organização
2025/03/07 - 2025/03/07	Lecture for high school students, part of the initiative "Conversas com Ciência" (Science Talks), with the theme "Biotecnologia e Bioética - caminhos do futuro" (Biotechnology and Bioethics - pathways to the future). Seminário	Conversas com Ciência / Science Talks Agrupamento de Escolas de Arcozelo, Portugal
2024/10/08 - 2024/10/08	Microbiology demonstration for high school students: presentation about bacteria and their presence in our daily lives; bacteria that cause disease and the problem of antibiotic resistance; bacteriophages, and their use in the treatment of bacterial infections. Demonstration, with laboratory samples, of the process of isolation and characterization of bacteriophages for a target bacterium. Oficina (workshop)	I Semana da Ciência de Ponte de Lima (1st Science Week of Ponte de Lima - Portugal) Câmara Municipal de Ponte de Lima, Portugal
2024/09/13 - 2024/09/13	Participation in the 3rd Symposium of the Belgian Society for Viruses of Microbes Simpósio	3rd BSVoM Symposium BSVoM - Belgian Society for Viruses of Microbes, Bélgica

Expedição científica

	Descrição da atividade	Instituição / Organização
2023/09/18 - 2023/09/29	Short-term Erasmus + at CEITEC (Structural Virology research group): evaluation of bacteriophage and bacteria interactions using cryo-EM.	Masarykova univerzita Stredoevropský technologický institut, República Checa

Membro de comissão

	Descrição da atividade Tipo de participação	Instituição / Organização
2023/03/03 - 2025/06/13	Member of the Ethics Council of the University of Minho. The Ethics Council is an advisory body of the University and supports the design and monitoring of policies and actions designed to safeguard ethical and deontological principles in scientific research, teaching, interaction with society and the general functioning of the University. Two of the member of this Council are students of study cycles leading to a master's or doctoral degree. Membro	Universidade do Minho, Portugal

Tutoria

	Tópico	Nome do aluno
2024/02/01 - Atual	Optimizing the treatment of Staphylococcus aureus biofilms with bacteriophages and antibiotics	Oona Deman (Ghent University)
2023/09/04 - 2024/12/17	Master's dissertation - Phage therapy applied to chronic lung infections: development and monitoring of therapeutic protocols	Ana Catarina Gomes (University of Minho)
2023/09/04 - 2024/11/29	Master's dissertation - Strategies to improve the antibacterial efficacy of phages against Pseudomonas aeruginosa biofilms	Ana Francisca Correia (University of Minho)
2023/07/03 - 2023/07/31	Summer internship - Introduction to bacteriophages and biofilms	Mariana Gonçalves and Joana Borges (University of Minho)
2023/04/03 - 2023/06/02	Master's internship: Bacteriophages to control infectious biofilms	Fares Douis (Lorraine University)
2022/07/03 - 2022/09/29	Master's dissertation - Supporting the Implementation of Phage Therapy in Portugal	Ana Pereira (University of Minho)
2022/07/01 - 2022/07/18	Summer internship - Introduction to protein expression and purification	Pedro Castro (University of Minho)

Distinções

Prémio

2024	First place winner - Photo Contest BioTecFoto at EXPOBIOTEC 2024 (Braga, Portugal) Universidade do Minho Centro de Engenharia Biológica, Portugal Câmara Municipal de Braga, Portugal
2024	Student Travel Scholarship - Conference Viruses of Microbes 2024 (Cairns, Australia)
2024	Travel grant - Conference Viruses of Microbes 2024 (FWO Research Foundation – Flanders, Belgium) Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek Vlaanderen, Bélgica
2023	Erasmus+ Scholarship - Central European Institute of Technology (CEITEC) (Brno, Czech Republic) Universidade do Minho, Portugal
2022	Award for the best work presented at EuroBioFilms 2022 (Mallorca, Spain) EuroBioFilms 2022 Organization, Espanha
2022	Honorable mention for the ability to communicate science at Microbiologia 2022 (Online) Sociedade Portuguesa de Microbiologia, Portugal
2020	Excellence Grant of the University of Minho (Braga, Portugal) Universidade do Minho, Portugal
2020	PhD Studentship - 2020.07494.BD (FCT, Portugal) Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, Portugal