Adriana O. Santos holds a degree in Pharmaceutical Sciences (2003) and a Ph.D. in Pharmacy (2009), specializing in Pharmaceutical Technology, from the University of Coimbra. Her doctoral thesis focused on targeted liposomes of siRNA for the treatment of small cell lung cancer. Adriana was a postdoctoral researcher at Institut Curie in Paris (2009-2012), where she studied the intracellular signaling of Ral and RalGEFs in lung cancer cells.
Since 2012, Adriana has been an Assistant Professor at the University of Beira Interior in the Department of Medical Sciences and a researcher at CICS-UBI. Since 2015, she participated in the scientific and pedagogical coordination committees of the Pharmaceutical Sciences Integrated Masters degree and was recently appointed as the mobility coordinator for the same course. She also coordinates the research group "Drug Discovery, Development, and Safety" (3DS) at CICS-UBI and is a member of its executive committee.
Adriana supervised a Ph.D. thesis in Pharmaceutical Sciences (March 2021), co-supervised 42 master''s dissertations, and supervised 6 undergraduate projects. Her recent research has focused on intranasal drug delivery for action in the brain. She is a (co)author of 40 full articles in peer-reviewed scientific journals, with 25 published in the last 5 years (2019-2023). She has also authored 2 book chapters and contributed to over 57 communications in scientific meetings. She is listed as an inventor on a pending international patent.
Adriana was the principal investigator of a project awarded the "CICS-UBI Collaborative Project Awards" in 2021 titled "Intranasal Delivery of Simvastatin in Stroke" and a proof-of-concept research project (PO Centro) titled " Segesterone Acetate Innovative Nanoemulsion" (SAIN). She has participated in 5 doctoral examination boards, 3 times as an examiner and 2 as a committee member, and in scientific committees of international meetings.