ITC Conference Grant

One ITC grant was successfully granted to YRI Marília Judite Falcão Torrado from Portugal to attend the 12th World Biomaterials Congress (WBC 2024, https://wbc2024.com/) in Daegu, South Korea from 26.-31.5.2024. She presented her work entitled "Let’s talk about neuroprotection! Exploring biodegradable dendrimers as delivery vectors in stroke".

Report from Marília Judite Falcão Torrado:

The World Biomaterials Congress (WBC 2024) was a very successful event, with an outstanding organization and with more than 4000 participants from all over the world. I feel very grateful for having had the chance to attend to the lectures of the world experts in the Biomaterials field, and learn about the innovative biomaterials being developed and the novel techniques used. Very entangled with the biomaterials’ world are the alternative models being established to a vast range of applications: from materials testing, to materials or techniques used in the models themselves.

Therefore, I learned a lot about this exciting ‘new’ field of research and had the opportunity to talk with some of the world experts, that gave me valuable ideas for my research. Moreover, a vast discussion was raised about animal studies, experimental design of biomaterials’ pre-clinical tests and all the regulations involved. It was also very interesting to perceive the diverse perspectives of researchers from different subjects on these topics and see the global change of interest from animal testing to the more in vitro alternative models. It is really an exciting era for this field and I believe that with all the efforts focused on this important change, we will have noticeable results in a near future.

Regarding my presentation, it was a pleasure to share my work with such a noticeable audience, that resulted in a good discussion about my results and important inputs from experts all over the world. Also, it was very pleasant to see that my work attracted very good comments from important names in my field of research, and that the audience was very interested on it. Moreover, important collaborations for my future work were established at WBC 2024, where we envisioned the development of an in vitro model that may be used for testing new brain therapies. Therefore, WBC 2024 was a very fruitful event for my work and my career and I thank you very much for helping me with this opportunity.